Abuja- The President, Abuja Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture, ABUCCIMA, Mr Tony Ejinkeonye, has pledged to boost regional trade of members and activities of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).
This is contained in a statement issued in Abuja on Sunday by the Chamber’s Public Relations Officer (PRO), Mr Olugbenga Salami.
The statement said that Ejinkeonye made the promise at the 2014 Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the chamber in Abuja where he was elected its new president.
It said the chamber, under the new president, would organise different programmes including seminars and trainings for the SMEs operators in the country to boost the sector.
The statement quoted Ejinkeonye as saying that: “one of my plans is to increase regional trade, the statistic that is available to us shows that 85 per cent of businesses Africans do is outside Africa.
“Our interest within these three years is to promote trade within African region with emphasis on the West Africa sub-region,” it said.
Ejinkeonye said the fall in the value of the naira and oil prices at the international market might be a blessing to Nigeria and Nigerians, describing Nigerians as “very resourceful and high capacity people with lots of innovations”.
“It will make us go back to our root basis; it will make us go back to the drawing board.
“So, to me as a businessman, it is not a disincentive, but a wakeup call for SMEs and businessmen to go back to the drawing board, to come up with solutions and for me it is achievable.
“Nigerians and businessmen are highly innovative and we will come out of it stronger,” it said.
The statement said the nation had limitations in financing the SMEs, adding that innovation was a vital tool.
It said that businesses could not continue to rely on banks for financing, saying that the bank had always been the most expensive way of financing business.
According to the statement, means of financing business can be through friends, relations, people that believe in your ideas, venture capitalists and many others, while banks should be the last resort.
The statement quoted a former ABUCCIMA President, Mr Dele Oye, as saying that government always designed laudable policies without the input of the people who were the beneficiaries of such policies.
“Government does not allow the stakeholders to make input which has been a major gulf between policy formulation and its implementation and that is why, as a chamber, we give feedback to the government on the policy made.
“When the money or funds are not accessible and is locked up in the bank, the real gain will not be there for the government because it is not yielding the expected interest,” it said.
The statement said the immediate past president of the chamber, Mr Solomon Nyagba, called for collaboration between government and private sector in developing the SMEs sector to grow the economy.
“If the government encourages the growth of SMEs, the operators would in turn employ the people and assist the masses and create wealth,” it said. (NAN)