Yemisi Izuora
The Bank of Industry has accepted to work in concert with the Catholic Brothers United (CBU) in the later’s planned empowerment program for Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SME’s) in the country.
The CBU, which is a socio-spiritual organisation of the St. Agnes Catholic Church, Maryland, Lagos, has concluded arrangement to host a one day conference, titled, ‘Enhancing Small and Medium Scale Businesses; A VIABLE TOOL FOR POVERTY ERADICATION, as part of its contribution to support governments efforts at developing the sector in order to create jobs for Nigerians.
The conference, which is the 16th of the series of such initiative by the association was specifically proposed to generate discourse on the myriad of challenges faced by SME’s in the country.
Considering the importance of the sector to national development, the managing director and chief executive officer of the Bank of Industry (BOI), Mr. Olaoluwa, has accepted to be the guest speaker at the conference scheduled to hold on the 2nd of August, 2015.
Olaoluwa while accepting to grace the occasion reiterated the banks commitment to enhancing productivity of the SME’s.
Commenting on the coming conference, President of the CBU, Mr Emmanuel Uwukhor, said the initiative aims at providing a forum for SME’s to fully understand the inventiveness of the bank.
Uwukhor, deprecated lack of full knowledge of the banks operations by some SME’s which prompted the craving of the association to create a satisfactory platform for parties to share knowledge and take advantage of the intercession activity of the bank to grow and sustain their business.
According to him, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are critical to the development of any economy as they possess great potentials for employment generation, improvement of local technology, output diversification, development of indigenous entrepreneurship and forward integration with large-scale industries.
He however regretted that in Nigeria, there has been gross under performance of the SMEs sub-sector which has undermined its contribution to economic growth and development.
The President further recalled that the importance attached to SME growth prompted IHS Towers the largest mobile telecommunications infrastructure provider in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, to sponsor a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit, titled “Enabling a more productive Nigeria: Powering SMEs”, which coincided with the report of the World Economic Forum on Africa, setting out factors that empower small and medium enterprises (‘SMEs’) and identifying growth driver as well as the issues that are holding them back.
He expressed delight that the report recognizes the efforts of government institutions particularly the BOI in supporting SMEs but also importantly shines a light on the innovative thinking embedded in the vital part of Nigeria’s economy.