Ismaila Jayeoba-Alagbada, Osun state Commissioner of Commerce, Industries and Cooperatives on Monday listed gains of outgoing administration of Rauf Aregbesola administration in the area of empowerment for small scale business owners, saying the state government has so far disbursed N4.5 billion to 27,352 beneficiaries under combined scheme.
Jayeoba-Alagbada stated that Governor Aregbesola’s administration also provided the initial sum of N100 million disbursable fund while the Central Bank of Nigeria added N2 billion.
He noted that the scheme tagged “Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Fund (CBN-MSME Development Fund)”, was sponsored by the state government and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
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He said the state government gave good attention to SME in order to keep this vital segment of the economy in active operation for the purposes of growing into a formal sector.
The Commissioner added that government established Osun Micro-credit Agency and structured it to effectively and efficiently render micro credit delivery services to all small scale business operators.
He further explained that, the State Government has through its Microcredit Agency undertaken another major step towards tackling the issue of MSME financing, stressing that the agency has implemented a digital transformation project.
The initiative, he said was aimed at improving efficiency, raising standards of people-centred service delivery, adopting global risk management and improving operational transparency.
According to the statistics indicating beneficiaries and the sum allocated, commerce and agriculture took the lion share of the disbursement as follows; Commerce has 12,531 beneficiaries with N2 billion disbursed while Agriculture disbursed N1.58 billion to 9,796 beneficiaries.
Other sectors include: Manufacturing which shared N472 million to 2,661 beneficiaries; 1,886 Artisans also received N472 million; 248 beneficiaries in the education sector got N53.57 million to 248 beneficiaries; Health: N59.72 million to 223 beneficiaries; while Hotel and Hospitality got N7.29 million distributed to seven beneficiaries respectively.
BOLADALE BAMIGBOLA, Osogbo.
