Heritage Bank Targets Fresh Capital from Investors

Heritage Bank Limited is looking for a more robust financial year by not ruling out injection of fresh capital from investors.
Mr Ifie Sekibo,the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Heritage Bank, stated this at the Vanguard Economic Submit, organised by Vanguard Newspapers.
This, according to him, would boost the bank’s capital and support its drive to intervene in the real sector of the economy.
Sekibo, however, declined to disclose the identity of the investors as well as 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 ranking of Nigeria 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.
Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Heritage Bank, said they 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 that there was need to deal with the 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).
Also speaking as a discussant, Mr. Muda Yusuf,Director-General of Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) said because of inadequate resources available to the Federal Government to adequately fund human capital development vis-à-vis economic development, 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.