The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) said a total of 20,230 micro enterprises have benefitted under its Conditional Grant Scheme.
The scheme is designed to help create jobs and improve the internally generated revenue of the three tiers of government across the country.
The scheme, among other benefits, seeks to enhance access to critical resources such as finance, through conditional grants of N50,000.00 each, workspace, markets and technology.
The director general/chief executive officer of SMEDAN, Dr. Dikko Umaru Radda stated this in Abuja yesterday, during a roundtable discission, organised by the Transparency Advocacy For Development Initiative (TADI).
The DG who was represented by the director, planning, research, monitoring and evaluation, Wale Fasanya, commended TADI for initiating the round-table discussion to enable SMEDAN interact with the media and more importantly, the Civil Society Organizations (CSOs).
He stressed that both the public and private sectors have roles to play in the sustainable development of MSMEs in Nigeria, saying that there is an obvious need for all the critical stakeholders to more than ever before put in place mechanism to ensure that the potentials that lie within the MSMEs are fully exploited to create wealth, employment and reduce poverty in Nigeria.
Speaking on some of the achievements of the development agency, he said, “The Conditional Grant Scheme is designed to help create jobs, improve the internally generated revenue of the three tiers of government across the country thereby reducing over dependence on oil revenue and migrate micro entrepreneurs from the informal to the formal sector by enhancing the competitiveness of these enterprises towards meeting national, regional and global standards.
“A total number of 20,230 micro enterprises has benefitted to date and the programme is ongoing.”
He promised that SMEDAN will continue to ensure that what needs to be done to develop this very important sub-sector is done.
On his part, the executive director of TADI, Ambassador Yomi David
expressed confidence that the continuous efforts at building synergies through this round table discussion will rapidly boost the roles of MSME’s in building capacity for national Development.
He said it intend to make a strong appeal and back it up with pragmatic advocacy that SMEDAN should be upgraded to a full fledge Commission for maximal performance and more effective output in the promotion and support for micro,small and medium enterprises development in Nigeria
