Mr Olawale Fasanya, the Director-General, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), has called on Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) to register on the agency’s portal.
Fasanya said on Sunday in Abuja that registering with the agency will assist MSMEs with ease of doing businesses and in turn grow their businesses.
The SMEDAN boss said that besides having data to work with when the need arises, having all MSMEs on the agency’s portal would help them in planning for them.
“Once we have information to give to MSMEs operators, we can go on the portal and send short messages to all those 3.1 million that are registered.
“This is because we have their data, their phone numbers and their email addresses.
“If you are in Abuja for instance and you are producing coconut oil, we do not think you have to go to Lagos because it will add to your production cost.
“There may be some people bringing coconut to Abuja, all we need do is go to the portal, get your details and link you up.
“That will reduce your cost of going to source your coconut from Badagary when somebody is already bringing it in bulk to Abuja,” he said.
Fasanya said that the idea of registering on the SMEDAN MSMEs portal would help the agency to link up businesses.
“If you are producing fish in Abuja and you are buying your feed from Nasarawa State, we can easily link you up with somebody in Lugbe because we have your data,” he said.
He said while statistics put the number of MSMEs at 39 million, only 3. 1 million were registered on SMEDAN portal.
While describing the figure as abysmal, Fasanya said that the idea of registration became important to enable SMEDAN recognise each MSME as an entity.
“In spite of the figure gotten from the national survey, many of the MSMEs have no known addresses, so we want to move them from informal to formal businesses,’’ he said.
On features of the registration portal, Fasanya said that upon registration, a certificate and unique number would be generated.
He said the number would thereafter be listed among other registered companies or businesses on the portal.
