The Federal Government has launched the National Council on Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) to facilitate small businesses in the country.
MSMEs council was officially inaugurated by Vice President Kashim Shettima on Friday.
The director-general of the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), Charles Odii, disclosed the information during a press briefing at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.
Odii said:
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“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, 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.”
In his directive, Shettima instructed the DG of SMEDAN and the Senior Special Assistant to the President on MSMEs and Job Creation, Office of the Vice President, to provide him with the council’s progress report every two weeks.
To ensure effective implementation, SMEDAN will be reaching out to all state governors, informing them about the council’s operation following its inauguration.
He said:
“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.
“So in terms of access to finance, we have announced a N5 billion, nine per cent 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.”
Members of the newly inaugurated council were the Vice President (Chairman); minister of industry, trade and investment (Vice Chairman) and two governors from each of the six geo-political zones.
Others were the ministers of agriculture, innovation, science and technology, and communication and digital economy and senior special assistant to the President on job creation and MSMEs, representative of the private sector; and the director-general of SMEDAN (Secretary).
