Experts in the Micro Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) space, at a stakeholders engagement on Thursday in Abuja, explained why most of the interventions given out by the Federal government fail to yield the desired results on small scale businesses.
Celestine Okeke, Lead Partner Sustainable Economic Entrepreneurship and Development Initiative (SEED) told BusinessDay at the event that government most often do not do proper diagnostics before throwing money into its interventions, describing them as more of make-shift approach than holistic.
“You cannot treat me – if am sick – without knowing really what is wrong with me. If I have malaria and you are treating me for typhoid, it is not going to work. So, government is yet to understand why small scale businesses are not doing well in the country, and until the government do that, they would keep spending money for what is not necessary,” said Celestine, who is also a consultant to Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agency, SMEDAN.
Okeke also underscored the point that policy makers should recognise that they are making the policies for people in different cases.
“Let me give for an example on National Enterprise Development Programme (NEDEP), launched in 2014. By 2015, the government said, there was no funding for it. It also said the Bank of Industry will cease to fund NEDEP,” he said.
He observed that there is still no commonality of approach between most of the agencies that work to drive policies of the MSME sub-sector.
The government should know what it is financing, he said, whenever it initiates intervention programmes. It should also encourage discussions among the beneficiaries and experts in the sector on best approach.
Nigeria had had sever intervention programmes running into billions targeted at solving the problems of the Small scale businesses,whose current figure according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics,NBS it put at 37 million,but industry analysts are worries of the rising unemployment rate in the coutry,which raises questions on the impact of these government interventions.
Nana Tim-Dudeifa, a Lawyer and a panelist at one of the sessions said policy somersault has been the bane of Nigeria’s problem. “Even when we appear to get it right,there is uncertainty of consistency should a next administration come from an opposition party.”
According to Aina it is important to re-define how government finance small scale businesses in the country as there is often no correlation and direct impact on solving the solutions of the small scale businesses.
“We have seen the Vice President done so much on the ease of doing business. But I have my worry, must we see his face as the major driver. What happens if he is not there, and there is another person who does not believe in his dream. It means we will slip back further on recorded gains,” she said.
