The Access to Finance (ATF) component aims to boost MSME performance and employment levels by expanding the capacity of financial intermediaries to deliver services tailored to meet the financial needs of MSMEs in Nigeria, particularly in the target states of Abia, Kaduna, and Lagos.

The primary subcomponent is a performance based Access to Finance Grants Program. Under this Program applications were solicited through advertisements in the newspapers and public meetings from technical assistance providers and registered financial institutions. All eligible institutions were given grants. As of June 30, 2009 there were 7 active grants of which six were already in operation. These institutions served roughly 1.1 million clients and 110,000 borrowers with a weighted average PAR at 30 days of 2.4% and an average loan size of under 100,000 Naira merge from accomplishments. It is anticipated that some changes may follow the problems in the financial sector in the late August of 2009.

As of June 30, 2009 the Project Grantees had a total of 106,000 borrowers for a total of 60.4 billion Naira and 1.15 million savers with total deposits of 7.5 billion naira. The waited average of Portfolio at Risk is 2.4%. Paid up capital is roughly 4.2 billion naira.

The grantees and their technical service providers are as follows:

	Accion Microfinance Bank, Lagos --- ACCION International
	MIC Microfinance Bank, Lagos -- SHORECAP, South Africa
	Susu Microfinance Bank, Lagos -- Initially Quality Finance International (QFI)
	AB Microfinance Bank, Lagos -- LFS Financial Systems of Germany
	Microcred Microfinance Bank, Kaduna -- Microcred SA, France
	Integrated Microfinance Bank, Lagos -- ECIAfrica, South Africa
	Oceanic Bank's Microfinance Program -- Genesis Analytics of South Africa and Microsave, Kenya

In addition to the grants the project has and continues to support workshops for the commercial microfinance industry in Nigeria. Workshops have been supported on:

- Technical Service Provider sources

- Governance and Portfolio Quality

- External Audit of Microfinance Institutions

- Savings Generation for Microfinance Institutions

- Mobile Telephony and Microfinance.

Others are planned.

For more information contact the Specialist, Access to Finance Component: Mr Emeka Ile, eile@msme-nigeria.org