Nigerian commercial banks seem to provide a rather poor support to the government’s ambition to strengthen the country’s economic diversification and reduce dependence on imported products and to oil exports.

Indeed, in the twelve months ending June 30, 2018, the volume of credits granted by these financial institutions to the industrial sector was NGN2,000 billion ($5.52 billion). Though this figure is important, it is less than the NGN2,265 billion loan granted by these same institutions to the sector the previous year.

In addition, though the inflation rate lost 6 percentage points to stand at 12.5%, it is still significant. Also, combined with the huge amount of previously accumulated bad debts, the cost of risks banks use to determine the interest rate on loans remained high in the country.