The President, Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, Mansur Ahmed, has said that the absence of proper linkage between the Small and Medium Enterprises sector and the large corporations accounted for the fragile nature of the manufacturing sector.
Ahmed, who was speaking in Lagos on Wednesday during the MAN annual luncheon, noted that among the activities that the association would pay greater attention to was the strengthening of linkages between the SME sector and the big firms.
“We shall be giving greater attention in the near future to promoting a more inclusive economy among all categories of companies in the membership of MAN, through the establishment of structured and mutually-beneficial linkages between the large corporations and small and medium industries,” he said.
Earlier in an exclusive interview with our correspondent, the Director of Corporate Affairs in the association, Mr Ambrose Oruche, informed our correspondent that MAN had concluded plans to create a link between small businesses and big ones, where the small businesses would serve as suppliers to the large firms.
He said the programme would consist of training operators in the small enterprise sector on the quality of input that the large organisations required and the quantity that they could be secured.
About 200 operators in the SME sector are suppliers of raw materials to the General Electric.
The Managing Director, GE, Mr Lazarus Angbanzo, told our correspondent that the organisation picked the operators and put them through training in the firm’s raw materials value chain, after which they are engaged as suppliers to the firm.
He said the operators were also empowered to create the kind of products that could not only be supplied locally but could be exported.
Oruche said that the reason why manufacturers were not patronising local suppliers was because the quality of what the manufacturers wanted could not sometimes be sourced locally, necessitating an increasing reliance on importation.
