The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria, SMEDAN, has called for the support of stakeholders to ensure that the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, MSMEs, sector becomes more competitive.

Director General of SMEDAN, Dr Olawale Fasanya, made the call in Abuja at a news conference to commemorate the 2023 World MSMEs Day with the theme “Building a Stronger Future Together’’.

Dr Fasanya recalled that the last survey jointly conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and SMEDAN in 2020, MSMEs in Nigeria did relatively well in their contributions to both employment and Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

“MSMEs were responsible for 46.31 per cent of the GDP and over 84 per cent of total employments and support from government and the private sector was critical in promoting the growth of the MSMEs sector” He said.

While saying that the sub-sector only contributed 6.21 per cent to the total export basket of Nigeria, the Director General described the record as abysmally low when compared to other emerging economies.

“The inference here is that our MSMEs are not globally competitive hence the need to ensure that the narrative is changed more especially with the anticipated impact the fuel subsidy removal would have on the sub-sector and SMEDAN expects more deliberate and coordinated support from other key stakeholders because the Agency is implementing support systems that can serve as the launch-pad for MSMEs development.’’ the Director General stated.

According to him, the Agency’s interventions seek to address the challenges that border on capacity building, advocacy, access to finance, funds and technology.

“Others are markets, raw materials, data and putting in place appropriate policy framework and SMEDAN had involved in sustained advocacy visits to private and public organisations that were into funding with the hope of availing MSMEs easier access to usable loans” He stressed.

He explained that despite persistent funding and challenges being experienced, the Agency initiated some programmes with some funding components.

“One of the programmes is the Conditional Grant Scheme (CGS) which, in the first instance, seeks to cause a reduction in the size of the informal Nano and Micro enterprises which the NBS report put at over 38 Million and there are over 75,000 beneficiaries of the CGS programme across the states since its inception in 2017″ the Director General added.

Mathew Ayoola, Edited By Grace Namiji