Summit tackles MSMEs financial access challenges
Improving financial access for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) is expected to bring many benefits, including enhancing production quality, increasing new business opportunities, stimulating investment and consumption at the national level, and mobilising excess corporate savings. The relationship between business promotion and finance is all encompassing.
Improving MSMEs’ access to the formal financial system is beneficial for rebalancing of the economy and sustaining the medium and small scale businesses. Towards achieving this, Green Pearls Services, a business consultancy firm organised a networking event this month for key stakeholders in the industry.
Doris Onwugamba, CEO, Green Pearls Services, said the networking event held in partnership with Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) was put together because consistently, beautiful business ideas end up enriching the grave, due to none realisation of the business idea. She said, “Some other few that make it to the light of day get strangulated. This is attributed to numerous reasons, such as lack of business finance (most frequent reason), absence of required synergy, wrong business expectation, and a lot more. The exasperating part of this situation is that solutions to these actually exist, but due to lack of proper information, the aftermath of ignorance takes the better of the situation.”
Onwugamba further stated, “There exist some private and public agencies, organisations and platforms, both Nigerian and foreign initiative, that constantly return to the drawing board, making zealous efforts to design initiatives, projects, programmes and products, for the entrepreneurial sector, with the aim of proffering services and structures that would ease the establishment and proper structuring of entrepreneurial business ideas. These plans often do not effectively achieve their intended aim.”
She then explained that with all these in the know, a business networking summit became inevitable. “MSME Business Networking Summit is centred on enlightening MSMEs of Platforms/Agencies they could leverage on for business growth; empowering MSMEs in business fund sources, business networking and collaborations,” she stated.
Explaining further, Onwugamba said, Entrepreneurs/ Entrepreneurial Platforms are individual entrepreneurs and bodies of entrepreneurs like Association of Micro Entrepreneurs of Nigeria (AMEN), Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), members of all Chambers of Commerce, Alumni of Entrepreneurship Training Centres like Enterprise Development Centre (EDC of Pan-Atlantic University), MSME Customers of Financial Institutions, etc.”
She then stated that Agencies/Platforms are SMEDAN, Federal Ministry of Industry Trade and Investment (FMITI), Bank of Industry (BOI), Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Nigerian Import and Export Bank (NEXIM Bank), Financial Institutions like Fidelity Bank, Diamond Bank, Seedvest Microfinance Bank, etc.”
According to Onwugamba, this networking summit held in Lagos enlightened MSMEs of business financing facilities they can access, created an ambience for business networking and partnership collaboration, proffered a platform for MSME Initiative Organisations to inform the entrepreneurs of available opportunities via them, means for benefit assessment and required prerequisite, paved the way for right information to get to the right people and in the long-run, empowered more business ideas to be established to create job opportunities.
Some of the collaboration organisations at the networking summit event were St Leo Entrepreneurship Academy (SLEA) in the education sector, YouWin Federal Government Project which provides business mentorship, (SMEDAN) which is a business consultancy organisation, AMEN, an entrepreneurial forum that is also into business consultancy, University of Nigeria Alumni Association, Lagos Branch (UNAA Lagos) in the education sector, into business consultancy, League of Anambra Professionals (LAP) in humanitarian services, also into business consultancy, Justice Development and Peace Commission (JDPC) St Leo’s Church into education and publicity, which has a business help desk, Leverage Media, which is an online media which provides Mentoring Web, and Success Leverage Foundation (SLF), which is a non-profit sustainability & growth strategy consultancy.
OLUYINKA ALAWODE