THE Governing Council of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) has approved the expansion of the Nigerian Content Intervention Fund (NCIF) from $200 million to $350 million.
The enlargement of the fund by $150 million was part of the decisions taken at the recent NCDMB Governing Council virtual meeting chaired by Timipre Sylva, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources of Nigeria on June 16.
The Council approved that $100 million from the additional funds would be deployed to boost the five existing loan products of the NCI Fund, which include manufacturing, asset acquisition, contract financing, loan refinancing and community contractor financing.
Similarly, the Council also approved $20 million and $30 million respectively for the two newly developed loan product types, the Intervention Fund for Women in Oil and Gas and PETAN Products which include Working Capital loans and Capacity Building loans for PETAN member companies.
It would be recall that the NCI Fund was instituted in 2017 as a $200 million fund managed by the Bank of Industry, BOI, engaged to facilitate on-lending to qualified stakeholders in the Nigerian Oil and Gas industry on five loan product types.
The NCI Fund is a portion of the Nigerian Content Development Fund (NCDF), aggregated from the one percent deduction from the value of contracts executed in the upstream sector of the oil and gas industry.
About 94 percent of the NCI Fund has been disbursed to 27 beneficiaries as at May 2020. The NCDMB has received new applications from 100 companies for nearly triple the size of the original fund.
'Niyi worked with The ICIR as an Investigative Reporter and Fact-checker from 2020 till September 2022. You can shoot him an email via niyioyedeji1@gmail.com. You can as well follow him on Twitter via @niyi_oyedeji.