The Minister of State for Industry, Trade and Investment, Mrs. Mariam Katagum, has inaugurated the MDA Focal Persons Group in the Implementation of the policy, following the Federal Government’s recent ratification of the revised National Policy on MSMEs (2021-2025).
The Federal Government had approved a new MSMEs policy, which categorised small enterprises based on turnover rather than assets, among other things.
The inauguration, according to the minister, marked a crucial turning point in the policy’s by implementation process, which was designed by the Nigerian Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency (SMEDAN).
She explained that after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) approved the 2nd revised policy on March 17, 2021, SMEDAN had sought the help of the Investment Climate Reform (ICR) Facility to establish a coordination mechanism, monitoring and evaluation system for effective tracking of the various MDA-specific actions.
Katagum, at the inauguration of the MDA Focal Persons Group, revealed that the NMSME framework is “very ambitious and requires multi-stakeholder partnership in implementing some of the recommendations”.
She explained that the process aims to ensure that the many actions of the government’s ministries, divisions, and agencies (MDAs) that intersect with the sub-sector are appropriately coordinated and reported.
The minister said, “The involvement of strategic MDAs and BMOs in developing sector-specific action plans and nomination of focal persons will certainly increase the pace of activities that will drive the development of the NMSME sub-sector.”
She explained that the policy’s entire goal is to build a platform or framework for NMSMEs to collaborate on some of their most basic difficulties, which is why the policy focuses on financing, skills development, marketing, technology, and research and development, among other things.
She also stated that a high-level monitoring and evaluation team comprised of public, private, and civil society interests would be established to ensure that the policy is implemented to a reasonable level between now and 2025, when it will be due for another review, stressing that this will hopefully measure the level of implementation while the feedback will form a major point of discussion at both the Technical Implementation Committee and the National Council.
Mr. Olawale Fasanya, the interim Director-General of SMEDAN, also spoke at the event, saying that the contributions of the focus persons group would strengthen their institutional commitments to working toward the achievement of the policy goals.
