Business Opportunities- The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is set to open more business opportunities in the country through the National Collateral Registry (NCR).

Acting Director, Corporate Communications, CBN, Mr. Isaac Okorafor, who disclosed this in a statement, said the NCR would soon move to the next phase of its mandate of easing business practices in Nigeria.

Okoroafor explained that the efforts by the apex bank to strengthen the NCR were a fall out of the recent World Bank report, which indicated Nigeria’s meteoric rise in the “Ease of Doing Business Index” from a previous position of 169th to a present position of 145th, out of 190 countries.

 Credit improvement

 He said CBN would do all within its mandate to strengthen the NCR in order to improve Nigeria’s current ranking of sixth position on the “Getting Access to Credit” index. Since its inception in 2016, Okoroafor said the NCR has acted as a catalyst to credit improvement by significantly improving the credit culture in the Nigerian banking system.

The NCR, according to him, equally made it possible for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) to leverage significant portion of their moveable assets as collateral for loans from financial institutions to grow their businesses.

 He further noted that the activities of the NCR have proved effective in complementing the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP) initiative of the Bank, which has been embraced by many more states of the Federation as a tool for job creation and food sufficiency.