By Archibong Jeremiah, House Of Assembly Correspondent
The member representing Boki 2 State Constituency in the Cross River State House of Assembly, Hon. Hilary Bisong has made available one million naira to be distributed as loan for the first twenty (20) of his constituents to register and operate a business account with UNICAL Micro Finance Bank, UMFB Okundi branch, Boki local government area.
He made the revelation to our House of Assembly Correspondent recently at the Assembly complex. Hon. Bisong further disclosed that he has made it a criteria that “If you must get financial assistance from me and you don’t have a functional UNICAL Micro Finance Bank, Okundi branch account I won’t respond.
“We brought them (UMFB), we need to support them to grow. Businesses in Boki are not for big commercial banks but for micro finance banks because they are small, community related. We needed a micro finance bank that can give small loans and the best thing to do was to bring a micro finance bank such as UNICAL Micro Finance bank”.
After commending the management of the bank he said, “The risk factors of going to Ogoja to cash money has been reduced, its life saving, it’s going to grow businesses in Boki”.
The loan according to Hon. Hilary is going to be continues and when borrowers pay back, more money will be added for the next year.
Adding that “by this I will raise twenty chief executive officers that will in turn employ others and if the money is used very well in the next five years check out what will happen”.
He called on his constituents to continue giving him the support they have been giving him as well as make good use of the opportunity provided them by the micro finance bank.
Hon. Bisong who doubles at the Chairman of the House of Assembly Committee on Culture, Tourism and Event Management, revealed that recently his office played host to the Director of Art, and Principal Partner for Culture and the Director for Society of the British Council.
According to him, “They are interested in sponsoring and building capacity in areas of society, art and education with Cross River State as their focal point. They want to train fifty (50) youths in areas of small holders scheme businesses in the tourism sector, they identified with us because according to them we already have the tourism market.
“They want to see how they can create calendar activities for us to fill in the gap from January to November before the carnival comes up. They have visited several tertiary institutions of ours to see how they can partner, in developing arts and culture. They are passionate about developing art and culture.
“It’s a good partnership, we told them that whatever we can do legislative wise to help them, we will, if they build this small holders industry it will provide capacity that will help our people. And they will give the beneficiaries grants”. He said.