In line with its initiative to empower the Small and Medium Scale Enterprises in the country, the Federal Government has instituted a micro-credit scheme for the SMEs.
The loan facility, Marketmoni/Micro Small and Medium Enterprises, MSME, is to begin in Kogi as a pilot state before spreading across the 36 states of the federation.
The scheme will serve as a delivery tool for the development and escalation of small and medium enterprises across Nigeria
Under the scheme, 7000 people will have N50,000 soft loans each to enable them boost their businesses or start new ones.
The data of beneficiaries have been obtained and forwarded to Bank of Industry (BoI) and accounts opened for them.
About 20,000 beneficiaries of the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) in Kogi were already getting a total of N100 million monthly The Next Edition gathered.
According to the Special Adviser to Governor Yahya Bello on Multilateral Donor Agencies and Special Projects, Mr. Adoga Ibrahim, there would be training, capacity building, collaborative and interactive programme to assist the small scale businesses.
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He said that the MSME clinic would attract over 27 parastatals associated with the growth of small and medium enterprises and open up opportunities for various businesses in the state.
“The parastatal agencies include: BOI, BOA, CAC, FIRS, CBN, NAFDAC, CPC, SON, SMEDAN and all commerce-related organisations.
“The registration started recently and we already have about 105 businesses that have registered. We are building structure, platforms and foundation that will enable the small and medium businesses to have confidence in what they are doing and grow their businesses.
“It is 70 per cent for women and 30 per cent for men. The small and medium enterprises will interact and showcase their businesses to the parastatals which will find a way of supporting them,” Ibrahim said.
In Kogi where the pilot scheme is taking off Ibrahim said that beneficiaries of the various federal government’s social investment programmes in the state, namely N-Power, GEEP/Marketmoni and Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT), had so far received close to N3 billion as at the end of 2017.
According to him, there will be training and sensitisation clinics for owners of small businesses in the state where they would have opportunity to be linked with business-enabling-institutions such as Bank of Agriculture (BOA), Bank of Industry (BOI), Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON) and NAFDAC, amongst others.
