The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) and Job Creation, Temitola Adekunle-Johnson, has restated the commitment of President Bola Tinubu to the sustenance of MSMEs in the country.
This follows the inauguration of the National Council on Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) by Vice President Kashim Shettima at the Presidential Villa, Abuja on Friday.
Adekunle-Johnson who spoke to State House Correspondents soon after the inauguration, stressed that Nigeria is ready for business thus, investors should come and do business in the country.
He said: “This shows the body language of Mr President. Nigeria is ready for business, small businesses especially. President Tinubu wants to create an environment where these small businesses thrive on a daily basis without issues.”
Director-General of Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), Mr Charles Odii, who also spoke to Journalists, assured Nigerians that the newly inaugurated Council will make its presence in all States of the federation, in collaboration with State Governments.
”What we had inside was the inauguration of the National Council on MSMEs. The council is saddled with the responsibility for ease of doing business for small businesses across the country.
“The Council will cascade to the different States and at the State levels all State Governors are the Heads and Chairmen of this Council.
“And we as SMEDAN, we will be the secretariat and our job basically is to make sure that this Council runs, small businesses can come and get everything they need, to start, grow and scale their businesses,” Mr Odii stated.
Updates
He said the Vice President charged the Council to give him updates fortnightly on its activities, especially as it relates to job creation.
“The Vice President has charged me and Temitola Adekunle-Johnson, Senior Special Assistant to the President on MSMEs and Job Creation, to come back to him every two weeks to give him a report on how we are creating jobs.
“And how we are easing the operation of small businesses across Nigeria and more importantly how we are alleviating poverty and enhancing the livelihood of Nigerians across the country,” he added.
Improved Security
On how he intends to leverage the improved security across the country, the SMEDAN boss said his agency would write to all the States Governors to inform them about the Council’s operation following its inauguration.
“We lost three million small businesses from our last statistics and this loss of small businesses borders around insecurity, access to finance, climate and global competitiveness for small businesses,” Odii disclosed.
He also said funds would be made available to MSMEs in the form of soft loans, in order to boost their activities.
“So in terms of access to finance, we have announced a N5 billion-nine percent no collateral loan for small businesses across the country in partnership with the Sterling Bank.
”We got N30 billion from Access Bank as well as another fund for the youth and women. And what we are trying to do is to make these funds available to small businesses across different sub-sectors so that they can actually access these funds to buy equipment that they need to create conducive working capital and environment,” he said.
Dominica Nwabufo
