Determined to ensure easier access to business financing, Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) operators in the country are already strategising to ensure easier access to the central bank’s N220 billion MSME loan.
The move industry, watchers believe, would advance the growth of small scale businesses which is the driving force of the economy around the globe.
Alaba Lawson, the deputy national president of the Nigeria Association of Industry, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA) told BusinessDay that “we are already pulling ourselves together into cooperatives; we are working together with the NACCIMA women group and is really working out well”.
He said, “We have our outreach in the 36 states of the federation and we are already pulling our members together, with our head office in Lagos. We hope the accessing of the loan is not going to be too hazardous for our members”.
He added, “We do not have a problem with pulling our members together. We have the city chambers, the state chambers, so we would not have issues in regard to that as such”.
According to him, “We are still in talks with the CBN to ensure that the guidelines are accessible and also to ensure that it is genuine businessmen that have real access to the loan during the disbursement so that it is not another sort of political jamboree”.
In addition, “If we have the machineries without the working capital, the SMEs would fail, they must look inside into what the capital operators need. We want the loan on a single digit and let it be accessible to our members that is why we are pulling ourselves into cooperatives”.
