The Impact of Microfinance Banks on the Growth Of Smes in Fct Nigeria (2005-2016)

Master''s Thesis from the year 2018 in the subject Economics - Economic Cycle and Growth grade: 75.00 University of Geneva course: Master of Business Administration language: English abstract: This project presented an investigation into the impact of microfinance banks (MFBs) on the growth of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Abuja between the periods of (2005-2017). To achieve this a comprehensive analysis was undertaken regarding the development of Microfinance as an economic tool and the relevance of SMEs to the achievement of widespread economic empowerment and the alleviation of poverty in Nigeria. Aside from conventional banking services such as the acceptance of deposits and provision of credit findings from primary research disclosed that the provision of capacity building and other supportive services were designated by the CBN as necessary for adequate development of SMEs. However information on the existence of some of these service or information regarding the measures of success experienced by SMEs in terms of growth through access to these services were difficult to ascertain. Therefore a secondary research was undertaken on twenty-one (21) MFBs and forty-eight (48) SMEs all based in FCT Abuja Nigeria with the aim of investigating the factors surrounding the rendering of capacity building and other core microfinance services as prescribed by the CBN. Findings revealed that only a fraction of identifiable CBN-described capacity building services were offered to SMEs by MFBs - services such as credit application training were focused on while other important capacity building services such as ''book keeping'' ''quality assessment'' and ''sales/marketing'' were largely ignored. Conclusive results revealed that there was not a significant indication of growth impacted on SMEs by MFBs. Findings rather suggested that there is a lot more that needed to be done in order for MFBs to effectively make an impact on the growth of SMEs. In conclusion ca