The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) says it will support Nigeria Micro Small and Medium Enterprises, MSMEs in a practical way through its SMEDAN SELECT initiative.
The Director-General of the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria, SMEDAN, Dr Dikko Umaru Radda said this at the launch of the SMEDAN SELECT Document in Enugu State, Southeast Nigeria
The DG who was represented by Director, Planning, Research, Monitoring and Evaluation Mr Wale Fasanya, said the SMEDAN SELECT is designed towards creating brands from standard products amongst the best of Made in Nigeria products in the food, fashion, beauty and goods sectors.
Radda said, “these products, numbering about 150, have been specially sought and selected across Nigeria and the products would be displayed and marketed on the SMEDAN Website and other social media handles.”
“The hardcopy catalogues would also be distributed to Embassies, MDAs and in departmental stores across major cities in Nigeria to improve the patronage of these products.”
He noted that the MSMEs sub-sector is a very important sub-sector in the Nigerian economy.
“They collectively account for a majority of the enterprises in Nigeria and also account for the highest number of jobs created in the economy,” Radda stated.
He said the recent National MSMEs Survey of 2017 conducted by the Agency in collaboration with the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) revealed that there are 41,543,028 MSMEs, employing 59,647,954 (76.5% of the labour force) and contributing 49.78% and 7.64% to nominal GDP and exports respectively.
The SMEDAN boss said this staggering statistics cannot be ignored in any serious economy, adding properly harnessed, MSMEs can trigger an entrepreneurial revolution in Industrialization, Agriculture and Commerce in Nigeria towards creating the platform for job creation, wealth creation, poverty alleviation and food security.
Dr Radda also said the globalisation process for MSMEs can be realized through any of a range of cross border activities, including trade, international investment, and participation in strategic alliances, partnerships and networking arrangements.
According to him, “governments in both industrialized and developing countries provide a wide variety of programmes to assist micro, Small and Medium Enterprises.”
“Despite the success of MSME strategies in a few countries, majority of developing countries have found that the impact of their SME development programs on enterprise performance has been less than satisfactory, as such there is the need to develop and deploy more specific approaches, hence the SMEDAN SELECT initiative.”
Dr Radda stated that the objectives of implementing SMEDAN SELECT are to increase access to local, regional and global markets for MSMEs; to support market expansion for MSMEs. to support the creation of brand names for Made-in-Nigeria products as well as to Increase awareness creation on standard Made in Nigeria products.
He however encouraged Nigerians to patronize all the products profiled as a way of supporting the MSMEs to achieve their collective goal of instituting the MSMEs sub-sector of our dream that would contribute significantly to job creation, wealth creation and poverty alleviation.
Suzan O
