The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) has partnered with Bloc, a financial services infrastructure company to boost the financial and economic power of MSMEs.
In a statement made available to BusinessDay, Olawale Fasanya, Director General of SMEDAN , said prevalent challenge for businesses in Nigeria has been a lack of necessary infrastructure to manage business operations and access financial services amongst other things, which is one of the challenges this strategic partnership with Bloc aims to solve.
“The partnership is aimed at promoting the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises in the country by providing them with easy access to FinTech tools and infrastructure in alignment with SMEDAN’s responsibilities as a government agency,” it stated.
Fasanya said if the MSMEs do well, they can contribute significantly to employment generation, wealth creation, poverty reduction, and sustainable economic growth and development in Nigeria.
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Explaining the role of Bloc in the partnership, he said it is a financial services infrastructure company that provides tools and software for MSMEs to efficiently manage their financial operations and improve how they serve their customers with financial technology.
He said beyond what Bloc also offers their expertise in managing financial operations which was seen recently with the launch of their new dashboard and the wide range of FinTech products available on their infrastructure.
“Beyond Bloc, SMEs will also have access to sign up to a directory of FinTech startups powered by the Bloc infrastructure for more niche services such as invoicing, inventory management, human resources, etc.” it added.
He revealed that the SMEDAN and Bloc platform is currently in development and will be ready for release May/June 2023 to the first set of businesses signed up on the waitlist.
Through this partnership SMEs in the SMEDAN directory would have access to the Bloc Dashboard and their directory of third-party financial products and services to directly manage financial and payment operations for themselves and their customers within and outside the country via the portal.
“As an add-on to this partnership, SMEs will be able to efficiently execute their business model and drive innovation within their business sector, benefiting SMEs and startups on Bloc while driving economic growth for the country; this partnership is focused on delivering measurable results for these businesses, opening up new opportunities for them and ensuring they have access to the best tools to make growth possible,” it read.
Overtime, SMEDAN has rolled out numerous initiatives in the past, such as the Subsidized Business Development (SBD) services, National Enterprise Development Programme (NEDEP) etc., that sought to empower MSMEs across the different regions in the country.
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