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Tag: MSMEs

  • Institute advocates quick payment policy for MSMEs

    The President and Chairman of Council, Institute of Credit Administration (ICA) Nigeria, Dr. Adetunji Oyebanji, has called for a deliberate policy thrust to ensure quick payment of confirmed invoices from micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).

    He gave this charge during his welcome address at the Institute’s Annual Mandatory Professional Development Credit Management Conference in Lagos.

    Oyebanji who is also the Chairman and Managing Director of Mobil Nigeria Plc noted that subjecting MSMEs to long delays in making payments to them could be injurious to their businesses as the sector is fragile and had no easy access to fund due to lack of collateral.

    He appealed to government at all levels and big companies to initiate policies that could lift up SMEs to critical business activities, stressing that such policy is the key to bolstering business activities in the economy.

    “We call on conglomerates, blue chips and multinationals in Nigeria to design policies that ensure quick payment of confirmed invoices from small and medium enterprises. Subjecting them to long delays in making payments could be injurious to their businesses as SMEs are fragile, having no easy access to fund due to lack of collateral.”

    While declaring open the Institute’s “National Pay Your Bill Month Campaign,” Oyebanji stated that the campaign would be directed at those indebted to one another, institutional, national or international debt obligations to make good their debt obligations or promises.

    “We enjoin all stakeholders to lend their voices to this clarion call. The month of APRIL every year is taken by our Institute as “National Pay Your Bill Month,” Oyebanji said.

    Throwing more light on the initiative, ICA Registrar and Chief Executive Officer, Professor Chris Onalo, said “What this means is that everybody will be reminded that if you are indebted to any person, business to business, individual to individual, government to corporate organisation and corporate organisations to government, government to government, to pay up the whole or part of the outstanding debts.

    “And the way I am looking at it, that month will produce billions of money paid back to creditors or rightful owners. It may not be all you are indebted to but you make conscious effort to pay something that day,” Onalo said.

  • SMEDAN trains MSMEs officers

    SMEDAN trains MSMEs officers

    The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) is training its Medium, Small and Micro Enterprises  (MSME) officers for the implementation of its One Local Government One Product (OLOP) Programme.

    Declaring the event open in Kaduna, its Director-General, Dr. Dikko Umaru Radda, said the agency was re-launching the OLOP programme in line with the vision of the Federal Government’s Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERPG).

    He said OLOP is a rural economy revitalisation plan built around the well-known drivers of its globally-renowned equivalent – One Village One Product – which originated from Japan.

    Radda told the desk officers that the One Local Government One Product, is a process  in which each local government identifies a valuable local resource in which it has competitive and comparative advantage to promote to the rest of the country through its value-addition, sales and marketing activities.

    He said the programme was focused on identifying local distinctiveness, value-addition, and branding and market access.

    He reiterated that  OLOP  would enable the agency achieve the goal of  identifying and galvanising  rural communities around their natural endowment for wealth creation.

    OLOP would also enhance technical, technological and business management skills of MSMEs (especially existing ones) as basis for expanding business opportunities of local communities and it will  facilitate emergence of value-added products, with emphasis on quality control, packaging and branding, he aded.

    Radda also pointed out that senatorial districts would be used as  the platform for the selection of the products, as the agency would be anticipating 109 products from the senatorial districts.

  • MSMEs, others owe BoA N37.4b

    MSMEs, others owe BoA N37.4b

    The Bank of Agriculture (BoA) has lamented that it is being owed N37.4 billion out of its current loan portfolio of N47.2 billion by Micro, Small, Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) and large scale beneficiaries both in agricultural and non-agricultural sector.

    Its Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Kabir Mohammed Adamu stated this when he received on oversight function, the Senate Committee on Agriculture led by its chairman, Senator Abdullahi Adamu.

    He said: “Our current loan portfolio is N47,212,810,354.05 to MSMEs and large scale both on agricultural and non-agricultural beneficiaries out of which the sum of N10,760,166,960.90 has been repaid with N37,449,480,101.02 is still in default.”

    The BoA chief also identified insufficient funding and the lack of inclusion in the Federal Government’s budget for its recurrent and capital expenditure as major challenge hampering the performance of the bank.

    Adamu who said the bank has been a special purpose vehicle towards the development and execution of the Federal Government Agricultural Agenda, also lamented the lack of loan repayment from organisations, groups and farmers.

    Other challenges he identified include failure of the shareholders, Federal Ministry of Finance Incorporated and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to pay their equity contributions which he said amount to N18,221,252,456.00.

    He also identified other factors inhibiting the organization to include weak capital base, lack of lending resources, information technology, staff related challenges, old and dilapidated structures and inability of tenants to pay their outstanding rents, poor office ambiance and high non-performing loans where other challenges.

    In view of the challenges, the BoA chief appealed to the committee to help make a case to President Muhammadu Buhari to provide funding on sustainable basis to allow the bank manage all agricultural interventions and other natural resources funds especially rice levy, wheat levy, sugar levy among others.

    “The National Assembly can also assist BoA by making legislations that would allow the bank to manage all Agricultural Interventions Funds such as the National Housing Funds being managed by the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria and cement subsidy by the Bank of Industry (BoI),” he said.

    The bank also urged the committee to prevail on the shareholders, Federal Ministry of Finance Incorporated, CBN to pay up their equity contributions and prevail on the Federal Ministry of Water Resources to release N1,386,000,000.00 being repayment of loans granted to it and it’s parastatals, and for the Federal Government to make budgetary provisions for administrative cost of the bank.

    Responding, Senator Adamu assured that the needful will be done to ensure that the bank is assisted in any way possible to enable it perform optimally and efficiently.

    He however urged the management of the BoA to formally present the challenges writing, assuring that the committee will make a case to Mr President accordingly.

  • FG to launch One-Stop-Shop for MSMEs in 7 states

    FG to launch One-Stop-Shop for MSMEs in 7 states

    In fulfillment of its mandate to significantly spur Micro, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (MSMEs) the Federal Government would launch one-stop shops in no fewer than seven states across the country.

    The measure is to facilitate smoother government regulation and interface between entrepreneurs and agencies of government.

    The Vice President’s Spokesman, Laolu Akande, said in a statement on Monday that already one such one-stop shop for MSMEs in Plateau State was launched in Jos on Aug. 24, and was being housed by the Plateau State Micro-Finance Development Agency (PLASMEDA).

    According to him, the states that are next in line are Abia, Cross River, Ogun, Akwa Ibom, Kwara, Kano, Benue and the FCT.

    He said that the shops were slated to take off between September and October, adding that more of the one-stop shops are expected to be launched in other states before the end of the year.

    The one-stop-shop is aimed at bridging the information gap between micro and small investors and regulatory agencies of government.

    Such agencies include the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), Standards Organization of Nigeria (SON), Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), and others.

    Akande said that the MSMEs clinics which held in several States already had provided the opportunities for entrepreneurs and local producers in the MSME level to interact with regulatory agencies.

    He added that the One-Stop Shop would create an ongoing opportunity in a permanent location to achieve the same purpose.

    The One-Stop Shop programme is part of the on-going Nationwide Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise Clinics for Viable Enterprises (MSME Clinics) initiated by the Presidency in January 2017.

    The MSMEs Clinics, one of the diversification initiatives of the Buhari administration, was designed to give small businesses the opportunity to interact with the industry regulators in an effort to spur local production and harness the nation’s export potential.

    The agencies to be housed in the One-Stop Shops are the Bank of Industry (BOI), Bank of Agriculture (BOA), CAC, FIRS, SON, NAFDAC, and the Industrial Training Fund (ITF).

    Others are the Nigerian Export-Import Bank (NEXIM), Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC), and Small & Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN).

  • UNIDO upgrades MSMEs’ financial literacy

    UNIDO upgrades MSMEs’ financial literacy

    The United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO’s) Investment and Technology Promotion Office (ITPO) in Nigeria, in partnership with government institutions and the private sector, has commenced the upgrade of the financial literacy of Nigerian entrepreneurs, Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs), women and youths.

    The programme is in response to United Nation (UN)’s call on UNIDO to develop, operationalise and lead the implementation of the programme for the UN’s Third Industrial Development Decade for Africa (IDDA III), which reaffirms the importance of industrialisation in supporting Africa’s own efforts towards sustained, inclusive economic growth and accelerated development.

    UNIDO was invited to foster partnerships and build joint initiatives in favour of industrialisation. Consequently, the UNIDO ITPO Nigeria has, in recent weeks, held a number of workshops on the use of UNIDO tools and methodologies for the preparation and appraisal of investment projects, both with the private sector and government agencies. A statement by UNIDO ITPO Nigeria’s Adebisi Olumodimu said the aim of the workshops was to help Nigeria prepare for the IDDA 111 at the grassroots level.

    According to the statement, five workshops were organised across Nigeria – one in Lagos in partnership with the Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA). The second workshop was in Kano in partnership with Kano State Government and the Office of the Special Advisor to the President on Youth and Student Affairs. Three of the workshops were in Abuja in partnership with the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC) and the Nigeria Incentive-based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending, among others.

    Olumodimu explained that governments, financial institutions and entrepreneurs require properly prepared feasibility studies in order to make sound investment decisions, adding that from the perspective of entrepreneurs, the most important factor was that they are “bank-ready.”

    “Many Nigerian start-ups do not survive because they cannot cope with the financial aspects of business. The problem of financial literacy affects a range of actors, starting with university graduates, who cannot find jobs, to existing MSMEs, which cannot find the resources to grow,” the statement said.

  • N200b online payment revenue vista for MSMEs

    N200b online payment revenue vista for MSMEs

    A fresh window of opportunity may have come the way of Nigeria’s estimated 37 million Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs). Small businesses and startups willing to adopt online payment solutions stand to benefit from a projected N200 billion online payment revenue this year. Assistant Editor OKWY IROEGBU-CHIKEZIE writes on how MSMEs can leverage online payment solutions to grow their businesses and create jobs.

    Small businesses and startups are acknowledged globally as the life blood of any economy. This is because of their immense capacity to grow the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and also create jobs. But in Nigeria and, indeed, other developing economies across the world, one of the major challenges of MSMEs is how to receive payments from their customers through cash and bank payments.

    Although, Nigeria, according to experts, boasts an estimated 37 million MSMEs, electronic payment remains relatively a new phenomenon. Most transactions in the country are done with cash, which remains the preferred medium for payment in the country. Factors such as poor awareness of e-payment solutions, ignorance, poor banking culture, lack of trust, illiteracy and the love for the status quo have been identified as being responsible for the high volume of cash transactions in Nigeria.

    However, the situation is changing. This was in the wake of the adoption of the “cashless” initiative by the monetary authorities in Nigeria, for instance. In 2016 alone, about N132 billion worth of goods and services were said to have been purchased via the Internet. This, according to financial experts, made online payment a veritable market for MSMEs to tap into to grow their businesses.

    The thinking is that MSMEs are perhaps, the most viable sector to drive growth as well as engage the highest number of employees in any economy. Their capacity to do so, according to experts, put them on a vantage position to turn around the fortunes of its operators as well as the country’s. Besides, viable MSMEs drive industrialisation. And this must have been why operators and stakeholders in the sector believe that the adoption of online payment solution remained the way to go for MSMEs.

    Already, PayU Nigeria, an online payment platform, appears poised to push an aggressive uptake of online payment solutions by MSMEs. Based on the firm’s findings, MSMEs stand to benefit from a projected N200 billion revenue that may accrue to the sector from online payments in the current year.

    PayU Nigeria Country Manager, Ms Juliet Nwanguma, also said that by adopting online payment systems, small business owners can enjoy the associated benefits of credibility and reliability, especially as it has proven to be more secure and credible than receiving cash or cheque payments.

    Nwanguma added that it also has the advantage of instant receipt of money with no risk of bounced cheques and the fees associated with it. She explained that businesses that have online payment platforms are considered more reliable and this encourages customers to do business with them, while for the consumer, it offers fraud protection, thereby securing their money.

    The online payment expert therefore, urged MSMEs in the country to leverage on online payment as it will open up their businesses to more customers far beyond their locality, considering that a large population of people now rely on and use the Internet to purchase goods and services.

    Nwanguma stated that setting up online payment is also quick and easy, as some of the payment platforms offer affordable plans with zero set-up fees and low transaction rates. She also revealed that MSMEs can use online platform to drive their export capabilities.

    At moment, the MSME sector is said to account for a paltry seven per cent of the country’s total export, a figure considered low when compared to the over 37 million MSMEs operators in Nigeria.

    To increase the capacity of MSMEs to contribute more to the country’s total export, Nwanguma told The Nation that her firm offers easy and instant online payment solutions for small businesses.

    Giving more insight to the available solutions, she said the PayU Easy product, for instance, is a quick, easy and hassle free way to start selling online. According to her, the solution is flexible and ideal for businesses without an online merchant account.

    She explained that PayU Easy comes with the assurance of her firm’s global expertise across 16 markets where they offer over 250 payment options.

    “PayU Easy is designed for businesses with less than 500 transactions weekly. It offers the advantage of minimum documentation, weekly settlement, security of transactions (PCI DSS SSL and 3D secure), and zero set-fee,” she said.

    That is not all. Nwanguma also said it offers the benefit of customised payment web page designed to ensure a consistent look and feel. “With PayU Easy, businesses can accept all major payments including Visa, MasterCard and bank transfers.

    “The online market offers huge potential to start-ups and the 37 million SMEs in Nigeria to grow their sales. PayU Easy was designed to help them tap into this potential,” Nwanguma explained.

    Explaining how it works, the PayU Nigeria boss said: “Customers simply click a link on their website and are transferred to a secure payments page where we handle the entire process. When they’re finished, we deliver them back to your site. The payment goes into an account with us, and we pay all the money owed to you at an agreed interval.”

    She assured that customers do not need to worry about card security; all they need to do is sign up and get selling. “Customers simply complete their purchase and you get confirmation that a transaction has taken place. The money from the sale goes into an account at PayU.

    “Usually every week, we add up your total, subtract our fees, and pay the balance into your account. You also get a statement. The whole process is automated, making it easy and effortless for you,” she explained.

    On the significance of PayU Nigeria to small businesses, Nwanguma stated that while MSMEs in Nigeria may have to wait for government’s intervention to address the various challenges confronting them including lack of access to low cost funds and poor infrastructure, they do not necessarily have to wait for such intervention to overcome the challenge of limited access to market.

    She stated that with the fast and easy online payment products offered by PayU Nigeria, MSMEs have the immediate opportunity to sell to more people in and around Nigeria, reduce the cost and risk of accepting payments, and as a result boost revenue and their contributions to the nation’s GDP.

    While noting that migrating business online might pose some challenges to some MSMEs regarding some accounting and inventory functions, she assured that her organisation has taken this into consideration and has taken it upon itself to automate online without the need for additional business intelligence tools.

    Operators’ reactions

    For the Managing Director of Black & Empress, an upscale clothing line on Broad Street, Lagos, Mrs. Evelyn Egboka, the adoption of online payment methods by MSMEs has become imperative. She noted that online payments aid faster sales, expand and increase patronage opportunities.

    “Customers can pay for goods and services from the comfort of their homes or wherever they are located. Currently, we accept payment easily and directly into our accounts, thus saving the time and resources for collecting and banking money collected via cash or cheque,” Egboka said.

    The budding entrepreneur admitted that for many operators in her line of business, this has greatly reduced the vulnerability of MSMEs to risk of cash theft and associated vices.

    Egboka, however, cautioned that the choice of the channel or online payment gateway a business decides on determines how cost effective it will be in the long run. She said she has watched her business grow beyond sending and receiving payments.

    Also reacting to the issue of safety of online payment, an Information Technology (IT) Manager with Crystal Park Integrated Solutions, Mr. Stephen Oluwasegun, said that for any payment system to be able to replace cash or at least compete with it, it must win the trust of its users in the economy.

    He said: “For this to happen there must be a way for merchants to verify the validity of the purchase. The payment solution must also be easily convertible to cash or as good as cash. Since most merchants in Nigeria are in business on subsistence basis, there must be a way to use the money they made for the day-to-buy what they need for the day or for the following day.”

     

  • ‘Accounting can sustain MSMEs in Nigeria’

    On April 6, 2017, the United Nation General Assembly resolved to designate June 27 as ‘Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Day’ and the first ever MSMEs day was celebrated last week’s Thursday 27th June 2017. This resolution is in recognition of the importance of MSMEs in achieving Sustainable Development Goals of UN General Assembly (2030 Agenda).

    Statistics have shown that MSMEs are major provider of jobs and catalyst for economic growth. The federal government of Nigeria in relisation of this fact has renewed its efforts in resolving the identified business environment problems that are hampering the growth and survival of the MSMEs in the country. The question now is that what are the MSMEs doing to help themselves?

    It has been identified that the major internal challenges faced by the MSMEs sub sector in this country are lack of proper business plans, competitive marketing strategy and standard accounting systems. In my experience as a professional accountant I have come across budding entrepreneurs start business and grow it without a documented business plan or a marketing strategy because they are business wise or “street wise” but struggle to take the business to the next level due to lack of or inadequate financial records. The attendant increased scope of operation resulting from the initial growth and lack of good record keeping system, making informed decisions on expansion or sustainability of the business becomes a challenge and if due care is not taken that could be the beginning of the end of the business.

    The truth is that most business owners in this sub sector in Nigeria do not appreciate the value of standard accounting system so they don’t engage accountant early enough to help in setting up and managing an accounting process. Some will hire an accountant and make him/her work like a sales representative; some will hire someone without cognate qualification to act as an accountant believing that the auditors will fix whatever problem comes out of it; among other practices that time and space will not permit me to enunciate in this article. The bottom-line is no good financial statements can come out of a system run in this manner. Why MSMEs should maintain sound accounting system.

    • Adequate records of business transaction make it possible to forecast financial requirement, acquire necessary capital and analyse investment decisions.
    • Price fixation is a serious issue for small business owners. Majority adopt cost plus margin basis of pricing but to effectively ascertain the cost of a product/service the must be proper records of cost elements of the product or service.
    • Every business entity is required under the applicable law to file returns and pay relevant taxes to government. To know the correct amount of tax obligation, MSMEs should have adequate and accurate books of account.
    • By provision of section 331 of Company and Allied Matter Act LFN 2004 and relevant sections of applicable tax statute, every entity (taxable or not) is mandatorily required to maintain good books of account.
    • In accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards for Small and Medium-sized Entities and compliance with Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria Act 2011, Statement of Financial Position, statement of comprehensive income, statement of change in equity and statement of cash flows are the approved key components of financial reporting about the financial status of an enterprise, and preparing these financial statements requires having a standard accounting system in place.

    The focus of 2017 UN MSMEs day commemoration was to advocate for increased support for MSMEs especially in the area of access to finance across key sectors of national economies. MSMEs in Nigeria must come to terms with the essence of having a standard accounting system to enable them benefit from both international and national efforts at stimulating the sustainable development of the sub sector. I will close with a quote from Praveen Vashistha, “A business that does not have books of account is like a blindfolded driver who can easily cause an accident.”

  • Enabling environment key to MSMEs growth, says El-Rufai

    TheRE is need to help new entrepreneurs start and grow   Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in the country, Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, has said.

    In a keynote address at the FATE Foundation’s third  policy dialogue series on entrepreneurship entitled: Scaling entrepreneurship: How state-led efforts can unlock the youth potential,  held in Lagos, El-Rufai stressed the responsibility of the government in providing an enabling environment for businessmen and women.

    Represented by Kaduna State’s Commissioner for Budget and Planning, Muhammad Sani Abdullahi, the  governor said Kaduna has taken the lead in the matter by investing in capacity building, market access, technology and eliminating barriers to MSMEs growth.

    He said: “One of the things we have done in Kaduna to build the entrepreneurship ecosystem is to identify and delete all the instances of multiple taxation that have bedeviled many of our business and is killing a lot of our small and medium scale enterprises.

    “We have codified our tax laws into one single unit that includes all our taxation which was passed in the beginning of last year, that law allows for only one single agency that is dealing with the internal revenue service to collect taxes on behalf of the entire state government. The impact of this is that businesses have a high survival chances and can now fully focus on providing the much needed jobs and growing the economy of Kaduna State.”

    He noted that capacity building of MSMEs could be best achieved with “great emphases on the peculiarities of local context”, adding: “It is very important to study the need of an area before providing intervention.”

    British Council’s Education, Enterprises and Skills Programme Director, Adetomi Soyinka, said the council ensures that its programmes were well adapted to the country to achieve optimal results.

    She said: ‘’We understand that local context is central. We are conscious of the fact that whatever knowledge we are bringing into Nigeria still need to adapt it to ensure that it can be utilised effectively here. So, when we have a programme where we might have UK facilitators or a dominance of contents coming from the UK, we still ensure that we have local facilitators or mentors who work with us to adapt it to the local context. It is very critical to ensure that whatever solution or intervention that we are doing is adaptable to what the Nigeria need is because Nigeria is a very special country with a different operating environment.’’

    Other speakers included Lagos State Commissioner for Wealth Creation and Employment, Babatunde Durosinmi-Etti, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr. Jumoke Oduwole and FATE Foundation Executive Director, Adenike Adeyemi.

    At the event, the Mapping of the Nigerian Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Report was presented.

    The FATE Foundation also  introduced its Annual Policy Dialogue on Entrepreneurship aimed at bringing stakeholders together, using its yearly Research Report as background.

  • Lagos unveils state-owned mfb, boost MSMEs with N25b

    A major boost is coming the way of micro, small and medium scale enterprises operating in Lagos state.

    Giving this assurance at the weekend was Lagos State Commissioner for Finance, Mr. Akinyemi Ashade. He spoke at a ceremony to unveil the newly established IBILE Microfinance Bank (IBILE MFB).

    He said the unveiling of the microfinance bank is another milestone in the financial inclusion in Lagos and that it was borne out of the concern of the state for the remaining 30 per cent Lagosians that are not part of the financial inclusion.

    He noted that Governor Akinwunmi Ambode is committed to his promise of making life better for the residents of the state, Ashade stated that the bank has “come to give financial support in form of soft loan to our people, young women, artisans, enterprising young people and others.

    “IBILE will complement employment trust fund and take financial banking to books and crannies of Lagos to ensure that our people have opportunities that will further the GDP of the state. We want everybody to be part of financial inclusion and have access to finance,” the commissioner said.

    He went on to say that the state government would make MSME loans available to the residents of the state who plan to go into small-scale businesses, but lack the necessary capital to do so.

    According to him, IBILE MFB would galvanise activities in the MSME sector “as it would allow more people to go into businesses which will ultimately reduce unemployment and the poverty rate in the state.”

    Speaking earlier, the Chairman of the bank, Hon. Kolawole Taiwo stated that the current government in the state is committed towards ensuring that it gives the people of the Centre of Excellence the dividends of democracy via access to opportunities for an enhanced standard of living.

    Kolawole, who was the immediate past deputy speaker of the State House of Assembly, stressed that IBILE MFB was established by the Lagos State Government and licensed by the Central Bank of Nigeria in January 2017 to carry out microfinance banking activities and was set up to alleviate poverty, reduce unemployment and increase financial inclusion in Lagos state.

    “IBILE MFB is the main disbursement vehicle to the Lagos State Employment Trust Fund (LSETF) which was established by the Lagos State Governor Akinwunmi Ambode with a N25billion fund over four years to finance the businesses of 100,000 micro and small and medium enterprises (MSME).”

  • AfDB seeks increase of MSMEs lending to $135b

    AfDB seeks increase of MSMEs lending to $135b

    The African Development Bank (AfDB) has called on financial credit providers to increase lending to Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in Africa to $135 billion.

    A statement endorsed by  its Communications Officer, Mr Emeka Anuforo, in Abuja yesterday said increasing affordable loans would promote the growth of MSMEs on the continent.

    The statement quoted AfDB President,  Dr. Akinwumi Adesina as saying that although Africa had the highest percentage of adults starting or running new businesses in the world, the productivity nonetheless remained low.

    Adesina solicited a holistic policy approach to strengthen entrepreneurship to facilitate Africa’s industrialisation and tackle the myriad financial constraints facing small-scale businesses.

    “The entrepreneurial culture is vibrant, with about 80 per cent of Africans viewing entrepreneurship as a good career opportunity.

    “New industrialisation strategies should focus on leveraging this dynamism and targeting the continent’s fast-growing private enterprises which have potential to create quality jobs.