Mr Godwin Emefiele, Governor, The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has earmarked N200 billion to support the healthcare sector to drive the recovery of Nigeria’s economy.
CBN governor Godwin Emefiele said this at the inauguration of Duchess International Hospital, the newly built 100-suits state-of-the-art health facility in Ikeja, Lagos.
“To further drive the recovery of our economy, the monetary policy recognized that while the interventions in our manufacturing sector is essential; it is also essential that we continue to support the medical sector.
“When we started COVID, CBN set aside N100 billion to support the healthcare sector.
“But upon rise in demand, we have disbursed N107.7 billion, supporting 114 healthcare projects which include medical diagnostics, pharmaceuticals, dental services, eye clinics both private and public hospital just to mention a few.
“We had taken up N100 billion to support healthcare but the monetary policy has said we should move it further up to N200 billion.
“We would continue to do whatever can be done to support healthcare,” he said.
The CBN governor expressed the bank’s commitment to continually support Nigerians in their businesses, calling on those abroad to come back home.
He said more importantly, for every 1 billion dollars allocated to medical treatment abroad, there was less than 1 billion dollars that could be available to other critical sectors of the economy.
Emefiele, therefore, urged banks to lend to Nigerians and members of the private sector community to invest, stressing that they did not need to be medical doctors to own a medical facility.
