10,000 Nigeria SMEs to benefit as SMEDAN secures N5bn

The Director General of Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria, Charles Odii, has announced that the agency has secured a N5 billion loan portfolio with the target to assist over 10,000 Small and Medium Enterprises in Nigeria.

He disclosed this on Wednesday while speaking with journalists.

According to Odii  poor information dissemination of government intervention programme remains a barrier to small enterprises gaining access to funds.

The DG, who stated this when the agency signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Sterling Bank, emphasised that informing the right businesses on available funds is as important as securing the funds from various partners.

He said:

“We have a case where some funds are lying unutilised in one of the banks, and it was close to N500million and only six persons accessed that money.”

“We did a panoramic sweep of the information dissemination that the agency did then and nobody knew that there were monies available with the agency waiting to be accessed.”

“So again, before we even start to talk about how many people accessed it, maybe there were bottlenecks, how many people know about these interventions?”

Speaking during the signing ceremony held at the agency headquarters in Abuja, Odii announced that the agency has secured a N5 billion loan portfolio with the target to assist over 10,000 Small and Medium Enterprises in Nigeria.

“He stated that the strategic partnership will help SMEs access loans ranging from N250,000 to N2.5 million at a single interest rate adding that the agency will begin to receive applications in two weeks.”