A total of $188m has been disbursed by the Federal Government from the Nigerian Content Intervention Fund to 27 firms in the oil and gas industry.
The Minister of State for Petroleum, Timipre Sylva, who said this, noted that the fund was targeted at boosting local contents among indigenous firms in the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry.
The NCI Fund was instituted in 2017 with an initial investment of $200m.
The FCI Fund is a portion of the Nigerian Content Development Fund, aggregated from one per cent of the value of contracts executed in the upstream sector of the Oil and Gas Industry.
The minister said between 2017 and May 2020, 94 per cent of the NCI funds had already been disbursed.
According to him, the facility was lent to 27 different beneficiaries during the period.
Sylva noted that the Nigerian Content Management Board had received 100 new applications from different companies.
He said the amount was triple the size of the $200m, which was initially set aside.
According to him, the management had approved additional $150m to accommodate such applications, an amount which increased the NCI Fund to $350m.
He said at the beginning of the application process, the funds were disbursed at eight per cent interest rate excluding the Community Contractor Finance Scheme, which was five per cent.
However, to mitigate the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the NCDMB Governing Council, has reduced the rate from eight per cent to six per cent, while the five per cent was left unchanged.
