A statement by the United Bank for Africa Plc (UBA) said the bank has extended $700m (N113bn) in funding to different investors toward the acquisition of power assets in Nigeria’s recently privatised power sector.
Group Managing Director, of the bank, Mr. Phillips Oduoza, gave this figure while speaking on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.Oduoza said“It is a growth sector in which we are playing very big.”
Besides power, he said UBA was also heavily involved in the nation’s telecommunications sector where the bank had taken part in most of the big-ticket transactions.On agriculture, the UBA chief executive officer said the bank had continued to channel resources to the sector, given the fact that it remains the mainstay of most economies in Africa.
He said, “UBA has a deliberate policy to continue to fund agriculture. Our lending to the sectoris already above the industry average. We are doing about seven per cent of our total portfolio in agriculture.”
He commended the fact that lending to agriculture is generally on the upward trend from Nigerian banks, stating that banking sector funding to agriculture had moved from just about 0.5 per cent of total industry portfolio prior to 2009 to about 4.9 percent.
