FG Disburses $188m Nigerian Content Intervention Fund To 27 Beneficiaries

The Federal Government has disbursed $188m under the Nigerian Content Intervention Fund to 27 qualified stakeholders in the oil and gas industry.

The Minister of State for Petroleum, Timipre Sylva, who gave the figure said the move was targeted at boosting local contents among indigenous firms in the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry.

The NCI Fund was instituted in 2017 with an initial investment of $200m.

The FCI Fund is a portion of the Nigerian Content Development Fund, aggregated from one per cent of the value of contracts executed in the upstream sector of the Oil and Gas Industry.

The minister said between 2017 to May 2020, 94 per cent of the NCI funds were already disbursed.

According to him, the facility was lent to 27 different beneficiaries during the period.

Sylva noted that the Nigerian Content Management Board, has received new 100 applications from different companies.

He said the amount was triple the size of the $200m which was initially set aside.

According to him, the management had approved additional $150m to accommodate such applications, an amount which rises NCI Fund up to $350m.

He said at the beginning of the application process, the funds were disbursed at eight per cent interest rate excluding the Community Contractor Finance Scheme which was five per cent.

However, to mitigate the impact of coronavirus pandemic, the NCDMB Governing Council, has reduced the rate from eight per cent to six per cent, while the five per cent was left unchanged.

He said further that the tenure for the loan was a maximum of five years adding that the board had also approved an extension of moratorium for all loan repayments.