THE Central Bank of Nigeria Development Centre is to train and empower 5,000 youths annually from the South-South geo-political zone in small and medium enterprises.
The Director-General of Micro Finance and Enterprise Development Agency in Cross River State, Mr. Ignatius Atsu, disclosed this on Wednesday during the presentation of certificate of incorporation to three cooperative societies facilitated by the United Cement Company in Calabar, Cross River State.
Atsu, who said that Cross River State won the hosting right of the nation’s apex bank enterprise development centre for the South-South zone, explained that CBN would inject a lot of resources to assist the centre for the empowerment of the youths.
According to him, about 5000 youths will be trained and empowered economically every year by the centre to be on their own, adding that the measure was aimed at reducing unemployment which often times lead to many restiveness among the youths.
He explained that MEDA was established to encourage and develop the micro enterprise sector for poverty reduction and that the agency develops intervention programme in different sectors of the economy.
The MEDA DG said there were three key areas of intervention, which according to him include capacity building, facilitation of access to credit for small and medium scale enterprises.
The director-general also disclosed the state had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Bank of Industry where N500m had been deposited in a pool for disbursement to SMEs.
Also speaking after the presentation of the certificate of incorporation to the three cooperative societies, the Corporate Affairs Manager of UniCem, Mr. Ayi Ita-Ayi said that the company assisted in building the capacity of the beneficiaries so that they would meet the requirements for the registration.
Ayi said that it was part of the cement manufacturing company’s corporate social responsibility to the host communities and that apart from the capacity building, the company had through the cooperation of host communities built and renovated schools, markets and boreholes.
