The Vice-President, Yemi Osinbajo has said the federal government has put in place several initiatives to help the micro, small and medium-scale enterprises (MSMEs) overcome their funding challenges.
He said in Abuja yesterday that the federal government had collaborated with about 17 states to set-up a minimum of five different kinds of production facilities for MSME operators.
According to him, all that would be required of small business operators, who face challenges funding the purchase of production equipment, was to pay a token to the government to rent the production facilities for the creation of their products as obtainable in some developed countries.
Represented at a press briefing by Tola Adekunle-Johnson, his Special Assistant on MSMEs, Osinbajo said having attended small business clinics across 17 states of the country in the past 18 months and interacted with over 303,000 MSME operators, the federal government had also initiated a rewarding system which will enable it reward 12 most outstanding small business owners.
He said: “The Presidency has graciously approved the establishment of shared facilities for MSMEs because as the clinics have gone we have seen that there are some MSME’s though smart but do not even have financial capabilities to run their businesses.
“A lot of MSME’s, they engage in different clusters but they don’t have money for the equipments to buy equipments for their clusters, so what we are trying to do as a government is to partner with interested states as well and say listen give us facilities. We, as the federal government, will come up with how to get the equipment or at least an average of five clusters per state.
“So, if you say for instance you are manufacturing pure water, you can come into this building pay a token, manufacture your pure water, that building would have been certified by National Agency for Drug and Food Administration and Control, NAFDAC, and Standard Organization of Nigeria, SON. Once you manufacture that pure water you are going to the market to sell. If you are doing leather works the same thing is applicable to that as well so that’s another initiative that has come out of national MSME clinics as well.”
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