The National Association of Small and Medium-scale Enterprises (NASME) has alleged that regulatory bodies are still making the cost of doing business in Nigeria high.
NASME’s chairman, Oyo State chapter, Prince John Karunwi, who stated this in Ibadan yesterday, also said the sub-sector is optimistic of impactful government policies in 2025.
According to him, the government made some efforts to improve the overall performance of the economy in 2024, but the outcome is yet to be visible.
Karunwi noted further that some executed interventions targeting Small and Medium-scale Enterprises (SMEs) are yet to reach a large percentage of these people.
He noted that other projects like the Bank of Industry’s intervention loans at single digits had yet to materialise.
“The impact of the high Monetary Policy Rate leading to high cost of funds along with outrageously high operation costs resulting from high cost of raw materials, high cost of energy, high logistics, and so on are toxic to sector performance.
“Also, regulatory bodies are still making the cost of doing business high.
“The low purchasing power of Nigerians also affects sales performance.
“In summary, the overall performance of the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise sub-sector did not improve significantly in 2024,” Karunwi said.
According to him, while they appreciate the efforts of the government in 2024, their hope is that they will start to see results and impacts in 2025.
“We look forward to the government coming up with programmes that can make impacts and bring relief to the SMEs in a short time.
“We also look forward to better business environments and policies that will have direct impacts on SMEs as well as reduce cost of doing business.
“We look for improvement in the energy sector, improved access to raw materials at the rate that would bring reduction in our production cost and make our businesses competitive.
“We look forward to economic policies that will revive comatose MSMEs,” Karunwi said.
Boosting small businesses is integral to the economic reform of the present administration.
The first phase of the Federal Government’s programmes has interventions worth N200 billion, of which N50 billion is a one-off conditional grant disbursed to targeted Nano-businesses segment of the NMSMEs.
The second phase of N75 billion targets the Micro, Small and Medium businesses. (Source: NAN)
