The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) says it is opening more business opportunities in Nigeria through the National Collateral Registry (NCR).

The bank’s position was made known in Abuja on Monday by its Acting Director, Corporate Communications, Isaac Okorafor, who revealed that soon the NCR would move to the next phase of its mandate of easing business practices in Nigeria.

According to him, the efforts being put into strengthening the NCR by the CBN were a fallout of the recent World Bank report, which indicated Nigeria’s meteoric rise in the “Ease of Doing Business Index.” The index had rated Nigeria 145th from a previous position of 169th, out of 190 countries.

Okorafor stressed that the bank would do all within its mandate to strengthen the NCR in order to improve Nigeria’s current ranking of sixth on the “Getting Access to Credit” index.

On the role of the bank in ensuring a robust financial sector, he said the reduction of information asymmetry had assisted lenders in making sound decisions on credit solutions and ultimately improved access to credit by Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs).

Since its inception in 2016, the NCR has acted as a catalyst to credit improvement by significantly improving the credit culture in the Nigerian banking system. The NCR equally made it possible for MSMEs to leverage significant portion of their moveable assets as collateral for loans from the financial institutions to grow their businesses.

The activities of the NCR have proved effective in complementing the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme initiative of the bank, which has been embraced by many more states in the country as a tool for job creation and food sufficiency.