By Francis Sadhere, Warri

President-General (PG), Urhobo Progress Union (UPU), Mr Moses Taiga, has revealed that the proposed Urhobo Microfinance Bank (MFB) would commence operation in the second quarters of 2019.

The PG of the apex umbrella body of the Urhobo ethnic nationality disclosed this at the “Meeting of the PGs of the 24 Urhobo Kingdom Forum” held at Effurun, Uvwie Local Government Area of Delta.

Addressing newsmen shortly after the meeting, Taiga said the union had started perfecting the necessary arrangement to secure the license and other requirements before May 2019.

He said the bank would have been functional before now attributing the delay to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) directive to stop the issuance of operational licenses to prospective investors.

“The Urhobo MFB would have taken off before now but CBN closed the gate of granting licenses, now that it has given the go ahead by May 2019, the bank will become operational,” he said.

Taiga said the aim of the bank was to uplift the wellbeing of the people particularly the women and youth of Urhobo land.

“The purpose of the bank is to give the women and youth access to small capital to do their businesses and by implication reduce unemployment,” he said.

The PG said that the Mfb would be a Single Unit category with a capital based of N200 million adding that 48 per cent of the shares would be owned by the Urhobo communities to guarantee its sustainability.

“For a single unit micro finance bank, you will have to pay 200 million. But we are going to raise 250 million for capital, cars, furnishing of the office and things like that,” he said.

He also said that UPU would owned a minimum percentage of the shares while the remaining shares would be owned by prominent Urhobo sons and daughters in the investment.

“I may or may not own shares there. The 24 kingdoms of Urhobo will own about 48% or more shares in that bank. It is their own thing and this will guarantee sustainability. Also, UPU and prominent Urhobos will own shares there too. It may not charge too much interest but at the same time it is not going to give away money for free. It is to give people guaranteed money to do small scale businesses,” the Urhobo PG said.

Taiga said that the concept of the investment was targeted at meeting the financial needs of the small scale business operators adding that it would lend at a single digit interest rate.

“The aim of the Mfb is to give the people, youth, women and traders guarantee means of getting money to borrow and pay back later at a very low interest rate.

“We are going for the Single Unit category which requires N200 million capital based,” he said.