Experts have urged small and medium scale enterprises(SMEs) to adopt strong business models for growth and productivity.
The Co-founder and Executive Director, Falcon Group, Mrs. Audrey Joe-Ezeigbo,made the plea while charging SMEs to push the frontiers of excellence and profession no matter how small the business might be.
She noted that this would make it easy for them, when they are requesting for BOI or CBN intervention fund and other initiatives of government to support SMEs.
She stated that if the oil and gas industry was heavily relying on government support to grow, it would not have been dominated by foreign players today.
She said that if there is so much focus on government, the society would excuse the private sector and allow them to think only about profit.
Ezeigbo stressed that government has a key role to play in terms of providing welfare and infrastructure, and the private sector should just concern itself with profit making only.
“It is important to ask the private sector whether they are putting policies in place to ensure that we are giving opportunities to our local industries and SMEs because the more we empower them, the more it trickles down to the lowest player. The overdependence on government is not helping the growth of the economy,” she said.
“The private sector has a key role to play in economic advancement of the country and Nigerians are very entrepreneurial people. Nigerians have the spirit of creating value out of nothing. We need a lot of knowledge sharing, capacity building and innovative ways of structuring businesses.
It is not quite true that we do not have enough facilities to support SMEs; there are several interventions on ground. But in order to support them, they will demand documentation and records which most of the SMEs do not have.
“In the business world of today, people want to invest in something realistic which will give the needed profit. Nobody wants to invest a company where the money will sink,” she added.
She challenged the SMEs to strive in repositioning the sector, stressing that if Nigeria companies decide to practice the principle of local content, it should be done very well in line with international best practices.
