By Dayo Omoogun
The Central Bank Governor Godwin Emefiele, has announced that the apex bank is developing a framework under which grants and long-term facilities would be made available to researchers,
science institutions and biotechnology firms for the purpose of developing a Nigerian Vaccine to fight the Coronavirus Disease.
This, he said, is in order to encourage greater research and development in Nigeria of drugs and vaccines that would help prevent the spread of the virus adding that “if we are to wait for foreign countries to develop their own vaccines, we will be the last in the queue to receive curative remedies for our teeming population”.
“The Central Bank of Nigeria today challenges Nigerian scientists at home and in the diaspora to go back to their laboratories and develop a Nigerian vaccine”, he added.
Emefiele, who was speaking at the launch of the THISDAY Dome COVID -19 Testing, Tracing & Treatment Center in Abuja on Tuesday, used the opportunity to highlight some of the apex bank’s initiatives aimed at curtailing the impact of the pandemic such as the N50b intervention facility for small and medium scale enterprises affected by COVID-19 as well as the N1 trillion facility for firms operating in the agriculture and manufacturing sectors.
“We are also working with financial institutions to enable the continuous flow of credit to viable businesses, while putting in place provisions such as moratoriums and restructuring of existing loans under CBN intervention funds, that have been provided to businesses”, he said.
The CBN governor also made reference to the recently launched CBN N100bn healthcare intervention fund which will provide practitioners in the Pharmaceutical and health care sectors access to finance at single digit rate.