Commonwealth Expresses Commitment To Boost Nigeria's MSMEs Sector

The commonwealth has assured of its support for Nigeria’s drive to grow the Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector.

Head of Section, Trade and Competitiveness Programme, Commonwealth Secretariat, London, Opeyemi Abebe, gave the assurance when she led a delegation to meet with a business membership organisation in Nigeria.

The meeting was organised by the Small and Medium Scale Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) to tap ideas to develop the MSMEs sector. 

Abebe described Commonwealth’s passion for Nigeria as great, adding that the country has the human potential to grow its economy through MSMEs because Nigerians are good in terms of skills. 

“The Commonwealth delegation is in Nigeria to support the county’s efforts to diversify its economy,’’ Abebe said.

She said MSMEs play a big role in growing the country, and the Commonwealth will do its own part to ensure Nigeria has a success story in this direction. 

Olawale Fasanya, the Director-General of SMEDAN, Olawale Fasanya, who was represented by Monday Ewans, the Acting Director-General of SMEDAN, expressed the agency’s commitment to repositioning MSMEs to become more competitive. 

"The government’s plan is to drive the sector to become more competitive at the international market level."

He also said that the government was determined to ensure the MSMEs sector becomes the highest employer of labour where 75 per cent of the country’s workforce would be proud of the sector. 

“We have a total of 39 million MSMEs in Nigeria according to the last survey carried out by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and when you look at that number, it is large. 

“We want a situation where the MSMEs export will be appreciated. When it comes to export, it is just 6.4 per cent, this is very small and this is because Nigeria's MSMEs are not globally competitive.

“We have products, natural resources and human capital but our natural resources have not been able to develop competitively,’’ Fasanya said.