How SMEDAN prevents collapse of SMEs – Masari
The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) says it provides the needed development services for business stakeholders to ensure that Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) do not collapse.
Bature Masari, director-general, SMEDAN, said this in Abuja at a News Agency of Nigeria forum, saying the agency had established offices across the country to monitor, evaluate and provide guidance to SMEs for better performance.
“We make sure that our offices are functional; we are interacting with individuals and groups, with a view to ensuring that whoever that is able to access any intervention funds utilises it properly.
“We are there to facilitate access to finance after identifying individuals and their groups that are willing to set up micro, small and medium enterprises.
“SMEDAN ensures round the clock monitoring and evaluation of their performance with a view to providing guidance needed to reduce the incidence of failure of enterprises shortly after establishment.
“We also ensure sustainability in SMEs development in every state and local government, which is the reason behind its establishment,’’ he said.
He said due to the experience and expertise SMEDAN had, it provided such services to the ‘YouWIN’ awardees that recorded high rate of success.
Meanwhile, the director-general said 23 Industrial Development Centres (IDCs) had been equipped to train millions of Nigerians on skill acquisition.
He said the 23 IDCs were handed over to the agency in 2013 to ensure that they were properly utilised, saying “the IDCs have been neglected for decades; most of them were out of use.
“But when we took over, we visited all the centres with the view to ensure that we identify the major problems that necessitated their closure. And we have been able to appraise all the IDCs and we have been working very hard to ensure that all of them are now in operation, even though on skeletal basis.
“Most of our IDCs have equipment and machineries that have capacity to train millions of Nigerians annually on vocational skills acquisition.’’
Masari said some of the facilities in the IDCs were used to provide training for Nigerians who wanted to have one or two vocational skills before they set up their enterprises.
According to him, SMEDAN has reached out to individual state governments and private sector to collaborate with the FG through the agency, to ensure that all the IDCs are properly utilised.
“The IDC we have in Oshogbo, we have been working in collaboration with the Osun State government and that IDC is now fully functional.
“The state government committed more than N200 million as part of our collaboration in rehabilitating some of the machineries and equipment in that IDC.
“In Kano, we are now collaborating with Kano state government with a view that Nigerians who are living in that area take full advantage of the equipment in the IDC.
“Only last week, the Kaduna State Governor, through his special assistant, wrote the agency asking for collaboration on how we can team up to ensure that the IDC in Zaria is properly brought back to full operation.
Masari said in 2014, SMEDAN did everything possible to ensure that money was voted for them to bring all the IDCs back into operation.
“It is now time for government to take full advantage of all available avenues that can help in the area of job creation and economic empowerment, which is what most Nigerians desire now,’’ he said.
Masari said SMEDAN also went into partnership with the Industrial Training Fund (ITF) to train Nigerians through the National Industrial Skills Development Programme (NISDP).
According to him, the NISDP, which is domiciled with ITF, is training 1,000 Nigerians in the phase one of the programmes.
“With the programme, Nigerian enterprise can begin to tap from the retinue of fully and well-trained personnel.
“We will continue to train more and more Nigerians until we are able to fill all the skill gaps that we have in various industries in the country; that is the idea of the NISDP programme.
“Our desire and determination to foster collaboration and partnership with private sector is because of the appreciation of the need for government to collaborate with the private sector.
“Government can’t alone provide employment generation and poverty reduction and ensuring economic inclusion all over the country; that is why we are out to identify willing collaborators.