The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) has commended the various initiatives of the Federal Government which are schemed towards positive economic revitalization of the Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) sector of the Nigerian economy.
The agency have declared it is particularly impressed with the recent roll out of a N50 billion intervention fund by Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for SMEs, as well as the resuscitation lately of the Vice President, Yeimi Ohinbajo led economic recovery team for the prime objective of creating 2 to 3 million jobs to revive the country’s SMEs sector.
Making this commendations was the Director General of SMEDAN, Dr Umaru Rada while speaking recently during an exclusive interview. He stated that the government’s initiative through the initial roll out of the N50 billion intervention fund by the CBN was quite commendable adding that the government move was capable to jump start operations and alleviate sufferings of Small and Media Scale Enterprises post the COVID 19 pandemic.
According to the agency boss, the government’s initiative of giving moratorium to all categories of loans offer to SMEs was a step in the right direction, including loan offers by Bank of Industry (BOI) as well as the chunk of other loans coming from commercial banks and macro finance banks across the country.
In views of the SMEDAN chief executive, Nigeria has one of the highest number of SME’s in Africa and the sector remains one of the most important and key sector to the economic development of the entire country. He added that with the employment of well over 60 million of Nigeria’s population, the SMEs sector is one that needed to be accorded much greater attention by government.
“I think honestly we are facing a very difficult time because this is something that is happening globally. The economy of the Small and Medium businesses in the country has really suffered because of this COVID 19 pandemic that is happening all over the world and Nigeria is not an exception”
“Nigeria has one of the highest number of SMEs in Africa and this is a very very important sector of the economy which helps in the development of the entire economy of the country because it is the sector that employed about 60 million Nigerians, so, this is a sector that really needs to be given attention”.
“I thank the Federal Government for rolling out some plans by the Central Bank, especially the 50 billion that they rolled out for the MSME, so that the MSME can be able to survive the hardship they are facing under this current situation. And again, we are happy that the Federal Government also gave moratorium to all the loans given by the Federal Government including those ones from BOI and because of the other chunk of the loans that comes from commercial banks and macro finance banks”.
“I think we wrote a letter through our ministry to the CBN Governor, so that the CBN Governor through the Bankers Committee can sit down and look at these issues from the macro finance bank perspective where most of the macro and small businesses got there facilities and also to look at the facilities given by the commercial banks, so that they can show a face of humanity by trying to reduce the moratorium, the interest rate to enable these businesses to survive”
“This is the engine room of economic development of this nation and we shouldn’t play with it, and again, we must thank the Federal Government for substituting the economic sustainability to the team headed by the Vice President of this country. I happen to be part of the sub- committee on Job creation, where the Federal Government is looking at how they can sustain and create about 2 to 3 million jobs within this period to can give a kind of relief to people under this sub sector of the economy” he added.
