The Development Bank of Nigeria Plc recently hosted its second Micro, Small, and Medium Scale Enterprises (MSMEs) summit in Kano where it advocated financial inclusion for Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs.
This was in line with its mandate of providing access to finance to small businesses in Nigeria.
The choice of Kano was informed by the economic importance of the great city to commercial activities in northern Nigeria.
The event was themed on the role of Development Bank in Inclusive Financing.
The Managing Director/CEO of Development Bank of Nigeria Plc, Tony Okpanachi, in his opening remarks accentuated the importance of the MSMEs to the socio-economic development of the region and the country. According to him, “It has become imperative for us to pull resources together and channel collaborative efforts towards building the capacity of the MSMSE as a way revitalizing their operations to address the challenge of access to finance. This will guarantee their growth and boost the economic potentials of this critical sub-sector.”
Okpanachi stated that: “The summit is one of DBN’s stakeholder engagement strategies aimed at creating awareness around our mandate of providing access to finance, capacity building, and partial credit guarantees to the MSMEs in Nigeria.
This is important because they play a crucial role in accelerating economic growth through poverty alleviation, job, and wealth creation.”
He said, “according to the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics, small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) in Nigeria have contributed about 48% of the national GDP (Gross Domestic Product) in the last five years. With a total number of about 17.4 million, they account for about 50% of industrial jobs and nearly 90% of the manufacturing sector”.
He further added that “though significant growth has been achieved in the MSME sector, there is still much to be done. Kano plays a major economic role in the northern business terrain and the challenges that MSMEs have to contend with are not different from those faced internationally. They include access to finance, value chains, and markets. A PwC report in 2020 identified obtaining finance, finding customers, and infrastructure deficits as the most pressing problems of MSMEs in Nigeria”.
The Kano State Governor, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje represented by the Head of Service, Alhaji Usman Bala Mohammed, shared his goodwill message at the summit, stating that the summit coincides with the Kano state development plan aimed at accelerating industrial growth which in turn will provide an enabling environment for commerce to thrive and for the economy to grow. He further urged entrepreneurs to take full advantage of the summit to seek solutions to their business challenges.
In his keynote address, CEO of Dantata Foods, Alhaji Tajudeen Dantata, said; “for us to discuss inclusive financing, we must recognize the important role of the MSMEs as key players in the Nigerian economy, the role of the DBN working in conjunction with their participating financial institutions in addressing the financial constraints faced by the MSMEs”
