The Central Bank of Nigeria, through the communiqué of the Monetary Policy Committee, announced the disbursement of N498 million to projects under the healthcare sector.
Details of the publication revealed that the disbursement was part of the bank’s effort at supporting a resilient healthcare sector.
The two (2) projects being assigned the total amount of N498.00 million are under the Healthcare Sector Intervention Facility (HSIF), a facility that has received a cumulative disbursement of N108.85 billion for 118 healthcare projects.
The communiqué stated, “As part of its effort to support the resilience of the healthcare sector, the Bank also disbursed N498.00 million to two (2) healthcare projects under the Healthcare Sector Intervention Facility (HSIF), bringing the cumulative disbursements to N108.85 billion for 118 projects, comprising of 31 pharmaceuticals, 82 hospital and 4 other services.”
In addition, the communiqué states that the CBN has received 224 applications, valued at N294.91 billion for real sector projects in different sectors of the economy, including healthcare. After applications have been processed, the first batch of beneficiaries under the intervention will be announced on 31st January 2022, with their names published in national dailies.
The Healthcare Sector Intervention Facility (HSIF) is a credit support for the healthcare sector by the Apex bank. The bank had introduced the scheme, which is a N100 billion credit support intervention for the sector as part of the measures to mitigate the effect of the Coronavirus pandemic on the economy.
Following the introduction of this intervention, the bank issued operational guidelines for credit support to the healthcare sector for indigenous pharmaceutical companies and healthcare practitioners that hope to build or expand their capacity.
The Scheme is expected to increase private and public investment in the healthcare sector, as well as facilitate improvements in the delivery of healthcare while reducing medical tourism to enhance foreign exchange conservation.
