The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) has attributed the poor performance of its key operations of Business support services to operators in the Micro,Small and Medium Enterprise,(MSME)sector to the paltry 8.99 percentage release of its 2016 capital budget.
SMEDAN’s budget performance in 2016 was made known by the Director General of the agency, Dikko Umaru Radda while presenting progress report on SMEDAN to the House of Representatives Committee on Industry when members visited the agency’s Industrial Development Centre (IDC) in Lagos during an oversight visit.
The director general in a statement on Monday said the agency had N193million as its 2016 appropriation for overhead and a capital vote of N1.8 billion respectively.
He stated that of the N194 million for overhead, only N121 million has been released to the agency while of the N1.79 billion appropriated for capital project, only a meagre sum of N162 million was released to date.
He said based on the releases to the agency, budget performance stands at 61.25% for overhead and 8.99% for capital.
Radda further stated that total expenditure for overhead as at December 13, 2016 was N119 million and N161 million for capital, with a balance of N2.06 million for overhead and N195, 810 for capital expenditures respectively.
He also stated that the percentage completion based on releases for the year remained 98.29% for overhead and 99.88% for capital project.
Further concerns raised by the director general include the establishment of an affordable and sustainable funding for MSME’s development in Nigeria. This according to him will include soft loan, matching grants and interest-free loans for their development.
Other concerns the director general said include the establishment of a dedicated bank for MSME’s in Nigeria to ensure availability of affordable finance for MSME’s. This he said will reduce the funding gap for MSME’s in Nigeria estimated to be in the region of N9 trillion by the Central Bank of Nigeria.
“Instituting and funding a mandatory one month entrepreneurship and vocational training for all National Youth Corp members nationwide towards job creation and poverty alleviation” he said.
He emphasized the need for an improved funding of the agency, if the job creation organization is to achieve its lofty objectives like its counterparts in other parts of the world.
He said emphasis should be on statutory funding of 0.5% tax on some imported finished products that can be locally produced. This he explained that the additional funding will be used in the areas of capacity building for MSME’s, strengthening of nationwide structures for MSME’s, monitoring and evaluation and impact assessment programme, empowerment for MSME’s and provision of common facilities among others.
Radda also advocated for government providing technology support for MSME’s in the areas of ICT, promotion research, development and innovation, promotion of technology commercialization platform.
He also listed other areas of immediate concern to MSME subsector to include funding of Business Development Services (BDC) which encompasses training and skills upgrading programme in the areas of MSME’s-University Internship programme.
Responding, the Chairman, House Committee on Industry, Hussaini Moriki, the statement said commended the efforts of the management of SMEDAN who in spite of lean financial resources still managed to impact on the MSME’s.
The committee he said was impressed with the presentation of the Director General and promised to intervene to draw the attention of the federal government to the challenges of the agency which he described as the key to the actualization of the government drive to diversify the economy to create the needed jobs for the growing unemployed in the country.
He also said the committee will look into the amendment of the Act establishing the agency so as to give it more power to develop the MSME sector of the economy. The House Committee members later undertook a tour of the Industrial Development Centre IDC in Ikorodu where they lamented on the encroachment of the centre and promised to take appropriate action.
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