By Ijendu Iheaka
December 1, 2016
Gov. Umar Ganduje of Kano State on Thursday advised his colleagues to sustain micro, small and medium enterprises development as a way to recover from the current recession.
Speaking at the second African International Small and Medium Enterprises Economic Summit and Awards 2016 in Aba, Abia, Ganduje said that if the nation must move from recession to recovery and even to boom, it must finance and equip such enterprises to function optimally.
“All the developed economies in the world, the G20, all of them take pride in entrepreneurship. They will tell you that micro, small and medium enterprises serve as the engine of growth of their economies.
“If you do not see the need for micro, small and medium enterprises, forget it, your economy cannot move forward. You will only be stagnating or going down.
“So any serious governor will embrace micro, small and medium entrepreneurs as the basis of moving the economy of the state forward from level of recession to recovery and to the level of sustainable economic development.
“We have identified more than nine challenges confronting the operation of micro, small and medium enterprises in Kano State and we are working to confront them and make progress.
“And serious governors have to design appropriate strategies to overcome these challenges.
“We have started and are ready to partner with other governors to ensure we deal with these challenges to pave the way for our micro, small and medium enterprises to grow from strength to strength.” he said.
The governor said that one of the strategies adopted by his state to ensure sustainability in the SMEs sector was the opening of at least one micro-finance bank in the 44 local government areas.
He said that while watching over the funds, the Kano State Micro-Finance Agency also ensured that the funds went to the entrepreneurs and not to politicians.
“We invest a portion of the funds from the Federation Account Allocation Committee into micro, small and medium enterprises,” he said.
Ganduje, represented by the Commissioner for Finance and Economic Development, Prof. Kabir Dandago, urged the governors to support SMEs for a vibrant economic growth.
Earlier in his speech, the President General of the African Association of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises, organisers of the event, Ambassador Darlignton Kalu said one of its targets was to grow the garment and leather sectors in Aba.
He noted that the operators in the sector numbering more than 300,000 were doing so under a harsh environment without access to finance and without any development strategy.
He said that there was the need to support the SMEs in reality rather than doing so to make news with no results thereafter.
He urged financial institutions, multi-lateral agencies, governments and donor agencies to partner with the association to establish a N5 billion trust fund for the development of SMEs in Africa.
He lamented the interference of governments and politicians in SME funds in Abia and called for a reversal of such trends in the interest of progress.
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