The Nigerian Export-Import Bank (NEXIM) has set a target to grow its balance sheet to N1.2 trillion next year, Managing Director, Abba Bello, said on Thursday in Abuja. He said the bank practically crawled its way out of bankruptcy between 2017 and 2020.

According to Bello, between 2015 and 2017, the bank was weighed down by 94 per cent Non-Performing Loans (NPL), a crop of demoralised workers and unethical practices. However, since 2017, Bello stated that “the declining trend in operational performance of the bank has since has been reversed, with improvement in key financial indices”.

He said the bank’s balance sheet grew from N67.73 million in April 2017 to N158.84 billion as at January 31, 2021. Giving the positive trajectory that NEXIM is on, he stated that the bank will continue with its “strategic partnerships for lines of credit and push for recapitalisation of the bank”.

The target of this efforts he said “is to achieve a Balance Sheet size of at least N1.2trillion in 2022”. Speaking on the performance of NEXIM bank so far, he said the bank recorded a profit of N1.09 billion in 2018, N2.13 billion in 2019 and N1.28 billion in 2020 (because of COVID-19).