The Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Godwin Emefiele, has urged the Bankers’ Committee to extend special facility to support Nigerian-registered Airlines and Media Industry in Nigeria to enable them address the negative impact of COVID-19 pandemic.
To this end, the operators of the two sectors of the Nigerian economy will soon heize a sigh of relief.
Following this directive, the banks in Nigeria will soon offer special facilities to them to curb the adverse effect of corona virus, COVID, pandemic on their businesses.
The CBN governor made this Intervention during the bank chief executives officers bi-monthly virtual meeting of the Bankers’ Committee on Tuesday, August 25, urging them to do all within their powers to support airlines in the country, noting that such support was critical to helping the industry recover from the economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the same vien, the apex bank chief urged the banks to support the efforts of the media industry in Nigeria, to cope with the lingering pandemic, in order to avoid massive job losses in the industry.
It will be recalled that the CBN, in the advent of the corona virus in Nigeria, announced a N1.2 trillion intervention funds to support critical sectors of the economy, N1 trillion of which was to support local manufacturing sector and to boost import substitution.
The remaining N100 billion of the intervention fund was to support the health sector in equipping laboratories and enhancing research to produce vaccines and test kits in Nigeria. The Bank, also in March 2020, unveiled guidelines for the implementation of a N100 billion Targeted Credit Facility, TCF as a stimulus package to support households and micro, small and medium enterprises affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
This move by the CBN and the Bankers’ Committee might just be an answer to the optimism expressed by the minister of aviation, Hadi Sirika, who said the ministry was hopeful that businesses in Nigeria’s aviation sector would be given opportunity to access palliatives from the CBN.
It is believed that with this 
support expected for the media in Nigeria, many media houses will be able to navigate the storm generated by the corona virus pandemic
