BoI YES scheme’s to promote youth entrepreneurship

The Bank of Industry (BoI) has said unlike the Subsidy Re-investment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P), its Youth Entrepreneurship Support (YES) initiative is an on-lending scheme to promote youth entrepreneurship.

It said the scheme is not a grant-giving scheme like the SURE-P, as the development finance institution is responsible to its investors and seeks to enhance sustainability by ensuring that funds are made available for developmental projects in the society.

Its Acting Managing Director, Waheed Olagunju aid many of the entries received under the YES programme, which is in its second phase, are false entries seeking free money and grants rather than entries willing to establish sustainable businesses in the country.

He said: “We were encouraged by GEF and we moved to YES which was launched in March last year. It is a national programme and we have done two rounds where about 70, 000 applications were received even though we discovered that because we said N5 million will be the highest, some people went and sat down at a business centre for three days and started filing multiple entries.

“By the time the Enterprise Development Centre of the Pan Atlantic University, the major development centre driving the process did their checks, they realised that out of the 70,000, about 40,000 were false entries. They thought that the N5 million was per person and they were saying that if this is YES P , it could be like SURE P.

“SURE P was a Federal Government based grant but the YES P is a lending programme. Most grants, particularly in our environment are not viable and sustainable because you are not trained and capacity is not built so this is why the emphasis is on viability and sustainability. We are reviewing the terms and conditions under the two schemes to see how we can fine-tune them without violating the prudential guidelines of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

“Our credit policy is predicated on the prudential guidelines and because we are a lending institution, we have to ensure that we operate within the law and operate within those guidelines. We cannot convert YES P to SURE P, it is a lending programme and not a grant. “We will continue to see how we can increase the access of our youths to the range of financial products that we offer at the BoI at much lower costs than commercial banks, because we lend at single digit rate.”

The chairman of First Bank, Mrs Ibukun Awosika commended BoI for its efforts in addressing youth unemployment in the country through creative programmes that encourage growth of small businesses and promote youth entrepreneurship.

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