Heritage Bank has re-affirmed its business principle to empower more Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in Nigeria. This is in addition to many of the similar small businesses the bank has helped financially since it began operations.
This was made known recently by Ifie Sekibo, group managing director, Heritage Bank, at a round-table discussion and MSME Success Stories, themed: ‘The Economic Outlook – What Future for MSMEs in Nigeria?, where other experts brain-stormed along with him to fashion out the way forward for Nigerian SMEs.
As part of the bank’s commitment to empowering the SMEs, Sekibo said led to the launching of SMEs Clinic that will help small businesses address challenges associated with setting up businesses while mitigating the effect of certain decisions that might be taken.
Represented by Mary Akpobome, who spoke extempore during a panel discussion, said the clinic was established as a result of the gap left by financial service providers in failing to provide fresh ideas, solution-based strategies and specialised service packages to small businesses.
Although SMEs have proved to be the crucial engines of industrial growth in developing economies like Nigeria, it is necessary to create strategies that can withstand the dynamics of the changing business environment rather than focusing on funds generation, he said.
Since the SMEs Clinic was established, many small businesses have sprung up and successfully on operation due to, not only the funding, but business advisory it freely offered, adding that financing is not the only problem SMEs face, but other necessary inputs, he said.
“Heritage Bank was established as part of the effort to fill the gap left by financial service providers in failing to provide fresh ideas, solution-based strategies and specialised service packages to small businesses. We pay a lot of attention to SMEs.
“Financing is not the problem, but the other business inputs. Heritage Bank has raised a lot of small businesses with SMEs Clinic. With it, we have built a lot of enduring organisations; we have done more that advisory than money. For us to extend loan to you to finance your business, you must have good business model,” he said.
Industrial experts in MSMEs in the Nigeria’s real sector at the occasion unanimously agreed that for the nation to have economic breakthrough as envisaged in the present dispensation of availability of investible funds from the government, the vision of sustainability in business should be taken as paramount by the operators.
Other experts from the financial institutions, business organisations and academia, who spoke at the event in Lagos, emphasised the relevance of booming SMEs to take the centrestage as a major driver of the economy as well as contributes immensely and filling the dollar drought gap being experienced in the country, brought about by the fallen prices of crude in the international oil market.
Doyin Salami, a senior lecturer at Lagos Business School, who opened the speeches in his tagged presentation ‘2015 Economic Outlook,’ said the SME operational strategies in 2015 would be three-pronged on election, transition and normalcy.
According to Salami, who wins the present presidential election is not the main issue but the outcome of the election. He maintained that a positive outcome would lead to the smooth transition and expected normalcy in the socio-economic of the country.
HOPE MOSES-ASHIKE
