Mr Charles Odii, the Director-General, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), has restated Federal Government’s commitment to ensure Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) have access to finance.
Odii told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that the President Bola Tinubu-led administration was focused at ensuring small business owners in the country had access to finance to grow their businesses.
“The oresident wants us to democratise access. Access to finance, access to market, capacity development, mentoring and network.
“The president is running an administration where he wants the son of a nobody to become somebody without knowing anybody. And this is basically in line with his Eight-point agenda.
“So if you take one of the biggest things that we have tried to do in terms of access, it is access to finance. We have tried to democratise access to finance for small businesses.
“This is because if you take 10 small businesses around the room and ask them what their problems are, I can assure you that nine out of 10 of them will tell you access to finance is the problem.
“ So, we have started to democratise access to finance. we have started to make sure that small businesses can get cheap financing and get it easy,’’ he said.
The director-general said to address this, SMEDAN signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Sterling bank to the tune of N5 billion for single digit interest at no collateral.
He said : “small businesses can access this funding for work capital, for work tools, and also to procure workspaces at a single digit.
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“We have gone ahead to do the same thing with the Bank of Industry (BoI), we signed an MoU to the tune of one billion naira.
“We signed the same one billion naira with Anambra, and Enugu state ,with Katsina state, so entrepreneurs in those different states can access funding at a single digit interest rate for business start-ups or for expansion.
“We hope to do this with other states. And in the coming months, we will be unveiling the other states that we have been doing this with.’’
According to Odii, these efforts resonates Tinubu’s vision of an inclusive economy aimed at creating equal opportunity for all regardless
of your background.
He said by easing financial constraints and enhancing market access, SMEDAN was paving the way for MSMEs growth and sustainability in the country.
