FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS AS A CATALYST FOR SMALL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
ABSTRACT
This project work deals with the financial institutions as a catalyst for small business development. The main objective of the commercial bank (first bank) in particular in terms of its role in the financing of small scale business. On the basis of findings and other major facts unvoided by this research work, it can be concluded that the financial institutions such as commercial banks have been performing significantly well in its role regarding the financial of businesses. The study succeeded in making some major findings that hampers the banks performance of this role possibly proffer solutions. Notable among the findings are: the discovering of remarkable fluctuation in loan approvals and disbursement, the existence of persistent wide gap between loan approval and disbursement, restrictive and stringent lending policy. It was equally gathered that the bankers sponsors a programme called young entrepreneurship scheme and extents loan for future entrepreneurs through National Economic Reconstruction Fund (NERFUND). Also, certain major problems that militate against the efficient operations of this bank was also uncovered such as unreliable information from its customers concerning their business, bad debts, liquidity squeeze and stringent CBN monetary policy guidelines. In this project work, the method of descriptive statistics was adopted in the analysis of data. It is worthy of note that this project work encountered some major limitations and constraints in the area of finance time, and researcher. They tended to limit the validity of our conclusion