17th May, 2015
Rasheed Olaoluwa, the Managing Director, Bank of Industry (BoI), on Saturday said the Bureau of Public Enterprises had opened bidding for the appointment of advisors for the privatisation of BOI.
Olaoluwa disclosed this while speaking in Lagos at a media parley with theme “BOI Impacting on Nigeria Industrial Sector”.
He said that much progress had been made on the privatisation of the bank by the Federal Government in the last few months.
Olaoluwa said that with the privatisation, the bank would be able to get more funds for its development mandate.
He said that BoI’s authoriised capital currently stood at N250 billion, of which N146 billion was paid up, adding the bank still had some gaps to fill.
“However, you are all aware that government has been taken steps to privatise BoI. Just two days ago (Thursday), BPE opened financial bid for the appointment of advisors.
“We don’t know the percentage that will be sold; all we know is that it is going to be partial privatisation.
“Beyond recapitalisation, our capital has always come from government but we are taking steps that will enable us look for funding from other sources and that is why we are doing some ratings”.
The BoI boss said the need to get more funding for the bank’s operation had made the management to embark on aggressive recovery of its non-performing loans.
He said that unlike in the past when the volume of non-performing loans was relatively high, the bank had reduced it to below five per cent within a short period.
Olaoluwa said that the bank had even gone as far as blacklisting defaulters.
He said that the volume of the bank’s non-performing loans was relatively high in the past, but the bank had embarked on initiatives to manage it downward, including loan recovery.
“The development bank in Brazil, their NPL is 2.6 per cent; the development bank in South Africa is 16.2 per cent.
“In Nigeria, among the commercial banks, the average in the industry is about six to seven per cent.
“That we are able to reduce it to below five per cent in BoI is highly commendable,” he said.