Heritage bank targets fresh investors

Heritage Bank is not ruling out injection of fresh capital from investors to boost the bank’s capital and support its drive to intervene in the real sector of the economy.
Mr Ifie Sekibo, the Managing Director of the bank revealed at the Vanguard Economic Submit, organised by Vanguard Newspapers.
Sekibo did not identify the investors and when the funds would get to the financial institution.
The theme of the Vanguard Economic Submit is “Human Capital Index versus Economic Growth, Nigeria’s policy options’’.
The discourse was informed by the recent World Bank Group’s ranking of Nigeria as 152 out of 157 countries on its first-ever Human Capital Index.
Also, the Brookings Institution said Nigeria had overtaken India as the nation with the highest number of extremely poor people.
The report showed that about 87 million Nigerians are in extreme poverty, with six Nigerians falling into extreme poverty every minute.
Data from National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, showed that the number of unemployed Nigerians rose by 3.3 million or 19 per cent to 20.9 million in third quarter of 2018 (Q3’18) from 17.6 million in third quarter of 2017 (Q3’17).
The discourse was therefore, organised for economic experts to proffer solutions to the problems confronting the economy such that government would be able align the nation’s economic with that of human capital development.
He said the Bank decided to partner with the organisers to achieve inclusive growth in the economy.
Sekibo, who was also one of the discussants at the event, noted the was need to deal with energy problem confronting the country because it accounted for about 35 per cent of overheads of banks.
He also said the minimum wage would increase liquidity and money supply and lead to inflation, a development which will make the Central Bank of Nigeria to mop up the excess money through Open Money Operation (OMO).
Another discussant, Mr. Muda Yusuf, Director-General of Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), said that inadequate resources available to the Federal Government hampered adequate funding of human capital development.
The situation, he said had also affected economic development and advised that government should grant complete tax holiday to private operators in the educational and health sectors to enable them to complement the efforts of government.
He observed that there was need to grow investments in a bid to grow revenue.