The Governing Board of the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) has reiterated the need for the agency to create a database for Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) that will enable the sector to attract more funding.
The platform is also expected to help provide a reliable data on the formal and informal sectors.
According to the Board, MSMEs are the drivers of socio-economic development in the country, hence the need to bring the MSMEs under the control of SMEDAN.
SMEDAN Chairman, Femi Pedro, who spoke during the maiden meeting of the fourth Governing Board held at the SMEDAN headquarters in Abuja, said the database would give SMEDAN power and make it easier to coordinate the MSMEs in line with global best practices.
The board chair explained that the board of SMEDAN would get an Executive Order to compel Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) partner SMEDAN.
“When we train MSMEs, we need to give them a unique identification number that will enable SMEDAN to track their activities and collect up-to-date information.
‘’According to the SMEDAN/NBS Survey, there are over 37 million MSMEs in the country and they are known to have contributed well over 59 million jobs, representing over 84 per cent of the total labor force.
”The sub-sector’s contribution to GDP in nominal terms is said to be 48.47 per cent, contributing 7.27 per cent to export,” Pedro said.
He however, noted that MSMEs sector is fraught with challenges, assuring that the board would work with the management of SMEDAN to address the identified challenges.
“While SMEDAN was deliberately established to midwife the sustainable and efficient structure, poor funding of this critical sub-sector, as an institution, is beset with several challenges which have impacted service delivery,” he said.
The D-G stressed that repositioning the agency towards realising its objectives, required a review of its strategies, systems and processes to reveal weaknesses to be fixed.
He said some of the major challenges facing the organisation were structure and poor funding.
The highlight of the meeting was the establishment of four committees that would drive the re-engineering of the agency
