The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), has disbursed N120 billion loan to 300 ailing companies to facilitate their recovery.

Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the CBN Governor, made the announcement on yesterday in Benin at the formal opening of a workshop organised by the bank for financial correspondents and Business Editors.

He said the loan, which was disbursed on Wednesday, had tenors of between seven and 15 years at a rate of about seven per cent per annum.

Sanusi said the loan was to save jobs, increase productivity and set companies on the way to recovery.

He added that it was also to fix the problem of productivity in the manufacturing sector.

Sanusi explained that CBN's intervention was necessary to assist the affected companies, since their financial requirements could not be met by the commercial banks.

He warned that the facility, which he described as "depositors' money," should not be used to finance facilities brought about by inefficiencies in the system.

The CBN governor said the problems of credit crunch were not limited to Nigeria, but a universal problem.

He said that banks' credit facilities were even higher in Nigeria than what was obtained in Ghana and South Africa.

Sanusi said the role of the CBN was to facilitate transactions in the country and aid the growth of the real sector of the economy.

Sanusi said he did not believe in the model of using the gross domestic product to measure economic growth.

According to him, the true growth of an economy could be better measured by jobs creation and the living standard of people (NAN).