With operational costs going over the rooftops, most small businesses hardly survive these days as they confront many challenges which render them prostrate at the end of the day.
Thankfully, these challenges besetting small businesses will soon be a thing of the past, all thanks to the initiative by the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agency (SMEDAN).
The agency is working out modalities to assist small businesses in its day to day running of their companies or businesses.
Specifically, the relocation of SMEDAN headquarters to Idu Industrial Area of Abuja has a lot of advantages as it has created various well-equipped workshops, ranging from fashion designing and all its modern machines to modern day furniture making to storage facilities, ICT centre, and so many others.
The equipment is meant to cushion the effect of fuel subsidy on businesses, to also help small businesses that cannot afford to buy certain kinds of machines in upgrading their designs.
The idea behind the common facility hub is to provide electricity round the clock as businesses come to operate or run their activities in the organisation premises.
The Director General, SMEDAN, Olawale Tunde Fasanya said the agency is doing all it can to make life easy for small business owners, graduates that are venturing into business and cannot afford the equipment.
The facility hub, he stressed, will provide most of their needs and bring the best out of their productions.
“The common facility hub is not restricted to a particular kind of business, like there is the furniture making facility hub, the tailoring and fashion designing facility hub, cold room for storage of tomatoes, fish, meat, etc, ICT centre. Whatever business you are doing that needs power, machines and assistance, just come to the SMEDAN facility hub and key into usage of these equipment. They are not restricted at all, they are for all who want to come and use them.”
Besides, it is expected that business owners come to the facility hub with their unfinished work, use the equipment to finish their work, move their works to wherever their showroom is and display them.
According to the DG, “SMEDAN has all sorts of state of the art machines in this common facility. It is obvious that as a small business you will need different kinds of machines to do your work which of course means investing a lot of capital; this is the major reason behind this common facility hub.”
On the modus operandi of the operations, the SMEDAN boss noted that the agency is putting all these together to help small businesses use the facility and will be charged a token for a day.
“The initial idea was a cluster for furniture making, along the lines, the management decided to expand to other entrepreneurship activities,” he said, adding that “The organisation is not selective in any way, there are no restrictions whatsoever, so long as the business you are doing has equipment that are in the facility hub. The common facility hub is opened to all. There is no way the organisation can select random businesses to come into the premises to work, so they decided to open the facility hub to all so they can come, pay and do their work.”
SMEDAN ensures there is constant power supply, which of course helps businesses coming in to do their work with ease, considering the subsidy removal which will make powering the generator extremely expensive for small businesses.
The money being charged is for maintenance. “The organisation is not looking for profit in any way, all it is charging is a token to maintain the facility, and again some amount of the money paid will go back to the government as revenue. “This is how it operates, you come to the facility hub, and you book for one to two hours. You don’t pay for diesel or manpower; you only come with your designs, put it in the computer and produce. We also have a state of the art garment making machine. As you all know, button hole machines are as expensive as N7million, which any fashion designer can come to the facility and use.
“Again if your capital base is not more than five hundred thousand naira to one million naira and you have your sewing machines and the cutter you can come into the facility hub and join your work, do your monogramming and other work at that little amount of money.
“If you are into T-shirts, there are machines you can book and use for production, that way your job is not tied down because of lack of power supply, there are enough machines to be used even if you have a job order.”
The organisation is working on spreading this facility hub to the 36 states of the federation. SMEDAN will work with governors to replicate this in their states. These are ways the fuel subsidy impact can be reduced.
“Aside from carpentry and tailoring, the organisation is adding a common storage facility too. No matter the distance, even if you are in mile 12 selling tomatoes and you cannot finish selling, instead of the tomato to get rotten you can package them and take them to the facility hub where there are well equipped storage system, that way you do not need to bother about lack of electricity to power your refrigerator.”
This is also to assure Nigerians that part of the subsidy money coming into government coffers will be channeled into providing a common facility hub for Small and Medium Enterprise, SMEs. With the machines available at the common facility hub, businesses owners that want to package their products can use the facility for clean and attractive packaging for exportation and local use. It has been observed that a lot of SMEs have good products but unattractive packaging, as it is obvious they cannot afford packaging machines.
Presently, apart from the Abuja facility hub, SMEDAN has another common facility hub in Ikorodu Lagos, soon we would have in Katsina, Oshogbo, as long as we have space in other states and with the commitment of the state governors it will work smoothly, they can recoup their money in no time as long as the common facility hub are maintained. SMEDAN movement from area 11 to Idu new office space is to ensure major SME issues are solved.
Fasanya also noted that the whole idea behind SMEDAN movement to the Idu Industrial hub is to run programmes like the facility hub where all small businesses intending to grow can always come and work and go.
“The agency is also in partnership with the Nigerian Export Promotion Council, NEPC on facilitation on how Nigerian products can be moved to other African countries, so the two organisations started with the Gambia.”
The partnership with Nigerians Export Promotion Council NEPC on promotion of made in Nigeria products within the West African region, with both organisations signing a Memorandum of Understanding, MOU on enhancing the visibility of Made-in-Nigeria goods and services within West Africa and other international markets.
Fasanya further noted that the MOU is to facilitate the first West African MSME, WAMSME, Export Opportunities Exhibition. “Our partnership with NEPC is one of the best partnerships we have ever had. Immediately I came on board. We signed an MOU some weeks after we took some SMEs to the Gambia and facilitated how their products got there and got to the product exhibition.
“Of all the products we took to the Gambia non came back to Nigeria, do you see that market is now open to Nigerian SMEs. Presently Nigerian SMEs that embarked on that exhibition are still getting orders from the Gambia. We are looking at assisting them to get containers with products to the Gambia since the demand for made in Nigeria products is on the rise. I want us to know that the whole West African market is the Nigerian market.
“First we did an assessment on SMEs that produce good products, good and attractive packaging that can enter the international market, it is based on this that we selected some for the Gambia exhibition. Again we are educating the SMEs on The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) knowing that it is not all that hear the name that knows the depth of its effect on businesses and how to harness it.”
The DG said the scope of AfCFTA is large. The agreement will reduce tariffs among member countries and cover policy areas such as trade facilitation and services, as well as regulatory measures such as sanitary standards and technical barriers to trade. Full implementation of AfCFTA would reshape markets and economies across the region and boost output in the services, manufacturing and natural resources sectors.
SMEDAN had earlier signed a Memorandum of Understanding MOU with Bloc, a fintech infrastructure company, to provide a platform that brings the benefit of financial technology to SME operators in the country. This the DG said will allow SMEs to rapidly access services that are beneficial to their business model from fintech companies operating in Nigeria and connected to the Bloc infrastructure.
“Bloc, which is a fintech infrastructure company with a PSSP licence from the Central Bank of Nigeria, is well positioned to meet the obligations of the partnership,” according to him, which still brings us to the SMEDAN common facility hub where a place is also equipped with tech machines for those in that field to come in operate and do their work a token.
Again he said Fintech cannot be excluded because it can help in this mission by diversifying and extending their marketing and sales from purely digital channels to SMEDAN’s confirmed database of diverse SMEs operating across multiple sectors and geographies in Nigeria.
