A Study on Manufacturing Project Financing by Commercial Bank of Ethiopia: Challenges and Prospects
Creators: name: Tesfa, Shimelis
Publisher: name: National Academic Digital Repository of Ethiopia
Year: 2015

description: The importance of manufacturing project to economic growth is unquestionable in that it benefits the economy at large in terms of creating employment opportunity, increasing in the GDP of the nation, import substitution and the like. On the other hand, banks that finance manufacturing projects get large amount of income and profit if they provide loans to large and/or more number of projects. However, care should be taken as to the challenges of manufacturing project financing since they are risky and are undertaken in uncertain, forecasted business environment on the one hand and they need huge investment capital on the other. Hence, the purpose of this study is to assess the challenges and prospects of manufacturing project financing by Commercial Bank of Ethiopia and give the required recommendation as a remedy for solving or reducing the effects of the challenges and utilize the prospects in a better manner. The study employed both quantitative and qualitative research approaches to achieve the intended objectives. Both primary and secondary data types were used to collect data from managerial and non-managerial credit performers and internal records of the bank. Review of credit documents, questionnaire and semi-structured interview were used for collecting both primary and secondary data types. Simple random and purposive sampling technique was used to select sample employee respondents of CBE. Moreover, descriptive survey method was used. All the close ended questions of the questionnaires were analyzed quantitatively using mean, frequency counts and percentages. Accordingly, the study revealed that the absence of quality and completeness of manufacturing project proposals submitted by customers and poor credit culture of customers of the bank, low level skill of credit performers, lack of support of research unit to credit process of the bank, and absence of adequate data and information in the CBE for credit processing , less availability of data and up-to-date data &amp; information outside CBE are major challenges of the manufacturing project financing by the CBE. In addition to this the current credit risk grading system of the CBE is found to be important for conducting credit analysis. However the challenges observed is that the parameters are subjective and broad in definition. In areas like Business risk and Management risk are found to be subjective to rate. No industry average in the sector. In Customer relationship risk especially in rating indicators like customer integrity and honesty is a challenge to rate. Finally recommendations were made based on the results of the study. Key recommendations include giving proper advice and seminars to customers, and intensive training, strengthening research&amp; development and Management information system process of the bank, better the bank prepares its own industry average which can be used for internal rating purpose, develop and implement internal rating systems with larger numbers of grades to distinguish finer degrees of credit risk, and setting a policy of submission of project proposals done by known consultancy firms