The Minister of State for Petroleum, Dr Ibe Kachikwu, on Thursday, urged financial institutions, oil companies and other stakeholders to support the expansion of Nigerian Content Intervention Fund.

The Minister made this call at the launching of a 200 million dollar Nigerian Content Intervention Fund in Abuja.

The Fund, provided by the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), will be administered by the Bank of Industry (BOI) and disbursed on a single digit interest rate of not more than eight percent within a period of five years, to qualified local players.

Kachikwu also said that it was important to ensure proper disbursement of the fund.

“We must be careful to see that we have reasonable geographical spread in what we are doing, so that we don’t have one geographical entity benefitting from it, so the fund must go round; that is key.”

“Secondly, I like to see this fund go to cutting edge technology driven businesses; we need to look for things that are not there as basic normal day-to-day activities.”

The Minister urged oil companies to identify companies within their domain, which have worked with them, and have capacity but lack certain things that can help them grow.

He thanked NCDMB for its effort at promoting local content. He also said that efforts were on to reduce the cost of oil production in Nigeria.