According to the FATE Institute State of Entrepreneurship (SoE) 2023 report, many businesses and entrepreneurs in the country are badly affected by Federal overnment policies.
In the last one year, entrepreneurs have been faced with high cost of doing business, occasioned by the Naira scarcity, fuel scarcity, fuel subsidy removal, exchange rate reforms, poor power supply, among other factors.
Amid these challenges, Kano, Kaduna, Kogi, Borno and Bayelsa have come out top as the best performing SMEs states in SoE 2023 report.
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The SoE 2023 report, published by The FATE Institute, the Research, Policy and Advocacy division of FATE Foundation examines the performance of Nano, Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (NMSMEs) in the last one year in Nigeria and how these businesses have fared in relation to business growth, job creation, adoption of technology and across different lenses – age of entrepreneurs, gender, and size of businesses, etc.
Executive Director, FATE Foundation, Adenike Adeyemi while speaking at a press briefing to announce its Ninth Entrepreneurship Policy Dialogue Series said Kano, Kogi, Kaduna, Borno and Bayelsa, were the five best performing states in NMSMEs.
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“In this year’s performance across sub-nationals ranking, the five best performing states are Kano, Kogi, Kaduna, Borno and Bayelsa.
“Specifically for Kano, the state scored the highest in three pillars – business performance, innovation and technology adoption and enabling business environments related to other states and Federal Capital Territory (FCT).”
She further said that 17 states and the FCT did relatively better compared to other states, while 19n states declined as stated in the SoE report.
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“At the bottom, Yobe, Niger, Taraba, Osun and Zamfara had the least scores. Overall, relative to last year, 19 states declined while 17 states and the FCT improved their rankings.”
This year’s report covered 10,377 businesses across the 36 states and the FCT. The FATE Institute also held Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) with entrepreneurs, policymakers and other stakeholders to gauge their experience and perception of the business environment and the performance of NMSMEs across sectors and states in Nigeria.
