4th National MSME Awards & Dinner Night On 27/06/2021

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Video Transcript

REMARKS BY HIS EXCELLENCY, PROF. YEMI OSINBAJO, SAN, GCON, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA, AT THE 4TH NATIONAL MSMEs AWARDS ON SUNDAY 27TH JUNE 2021.

PROTOCOLS

I bring you warm greetings from President Muhammadu Buhari, who is, as you know, particularly proud of the impact and contributions of MSMEs in the economy.

I am particularly delighted to have another opportunity to see some of our young and innovative entrepreneurs, here in this hall today.

Since its inauguration in 2018, the National MSME Awards has grown in leaps and bounds. It has become a prominent feature in the annual event calendar of the MSME community in Nigeria, attracting thousands of prospective business owners, established entrepreneurs, regulators, and financiers.

In the first edition of the awards in 2018, 500 applications were received. I am told that over 10,000 entries were received for this year’s edition alone. Clearly, the interest shown in the awards by Nigerian entrepreneurs has been tremendous. In the past years, winners in the different categories have gone home with various prizes that have impacted their businesses and profiles – cash prizes, cars, and of course local and international media attention.

The awards have also inspired many young entrepreneurs to greatness and some of the stories are simply incredible. This year we also have a selection of outstanding winners. Our MSME of the Year “Bold Artistry” is a company with a team of young and creative artists working on improving the arts industry by introducing Polystyrene to their works. With this, they have created impressive artworks and are providing jobs for many, budding artists.

Osky Integrated has created its niche in the business of catfish farming. The founders are adding value to fish farming through processing for the local and export market.

Other winners such as Vegas Gold and the Footwear Academy, and other various winners operating across different industries. They all have something unique about them; they employ a good number of young Nigerian men and women; they have worked very hard to develop their businesses.

But today is not just about them, even though they are the winners, it is about the so many who couldn’t make even the top three, but are nevertheless very ingenious, very great businesses in their own right and doing awesome things. We must celebrate all of them, the nominees and those who were not even nominated. We had over 10,000 entries and we can see that there are so many businesses doing incredible things and every year we will continue to recognize and celebrate them.

We have decided to make this annual celebration of excellence and innovation in the MSME sector a week-long event. The idea is to draw more attention to the challenges and prospects in the MSMEs sector.

As you may be aware, all the finalists typically get, as part of the prize package, two weeks of media attention to showcase and market their products. I am glad to note that this year will be even bigger when compared to the limitations experienced during the 2020 edition due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Let me take a moment to talk about some of your government’s support for the MSME sector. In the aftermath of the pandemic, we designed the Economic Sustainability Plan (ESP) and the President asked me to chair the Economic Sustainability Committee. The whole idea was to save jobs and create new opportunities. One of the interventions in the plan was the MSMEs Survival Fund, which was the creation of the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment and the Minister of State, Amb. Mariam Yalwaji Katagum, was the anchor of that very important programme. The programme comprised of a Payroll Support scheme for qualifying businesses, a Grant scheme for artisans and transporters, and free business name registration. All these were meant to be incentives to support the sector.

Under the Payroll Support component of the plan, so far, 459,307 employees have been successfully paid between N30,000 and N50,000 over a period of 3 months. The target beneficiaries of this scheme include private schools, hotels, road transport workers, the creative industry, and various others, with a very painstaking and rigorous verification process.

There was also the track for artisans and transporters known as the Artisan and Transport Grant targeted at 330,000 beneficiaries. To date, 265,425 have been successfully paid under the scheme.

For the General MSME Grant, out of the 100,000 targeted beneficiaries, over 44,000 beneficiaries have been paid across the 36 States of the Federation and the FCT.

The Guaranteed Offtake Scheme (GOS) will target 100,000 businesses. The focus is on MSMEs manufacturing local products by guaranteeing the purchase from them of qualifying products such as: face masks, hand sanitizers, and PPEs for essential medical workers. These products will then be distributed to Nigerians, Nigerian institutions, and entities that would require them.

Under the Formalization Support scheme, an initiative to support the registration of 250,000 businesses across the country free of charge, a total of 229,532 new businesses have been registered.

In total, close to a million beneficiaries have so far received one form of support or the other under the Survival Fund scheme. I would like to congratulate the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment not just for the creativity of the type of schemes and programmes but also for the very efficient handling of the whole scheme and ensuring that beneficiaries are paid promptly.

In addition, we have a N200billion fund, which is made available to MSMEs in priority sectors such as Healthcare, Agro-processing, Creative Industries, Local Oil and Gas and Aviation. This is granted through a scheme jointly run by the Bank of Industry and NEXIM Bank, especially for export expansion. The Central Bank has also created a N100billion target credit facility for MSMEs.

We have also paid attention to Ease of Doing Business Initiatives, consolidating on previous efforts and actions. And in the wake of the pandemic, last year, NAFDAC launched a Palliative Scheme for MSMEs. The main objective of the scheme was to reduce product registration fees by 80 percent for a six-month period, and also provide an E-Registration option, in keeping with our desire to promote COVID-19 compliant behavior.

We have also launched two production facilities under our Shared Facility initiative. One in Benue State (a 200,000-capacity yam storage facility for smallholder farmers in Zaki Biam Yam Market) and the other in Lagos State (a modern Fashion hub in Ikeja).

The facility for Anambra – a state-of-the-art leather works facility at Ogbunike leather cluster, has been completed and is ready for commissioning. Other Shared Facility projects ready for com-missioning soon include Kaduna State Tomato Paste Production line and a Carpentry cluster in Edo State. Others in Katsina, Kebbi, Ebonyi, Ogun and Kano States are being put in place.

Let me once again congratulate all the finalists and winning MSMEs across the country. And to those who didn’t make it this year, don’t give up, keep innovating, keep working hard, your recognition and reward is inevitable.

Permit me to also thank all the Governors who hosted MSME Clinics in their States in the past year, who supported the building of One-Stop Shops for MSMEs, and also those who provided suitable buildings for the Shared Facilities for MSMEs. The collaboration of all the States is absolutely important in ensuring that we are able to deliver on all of the promises of MSME Clinics.

I must also thank all our Partner Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) for your immense support, and Access Bank Plc which has always been a dependable partner for all our MSME Clinics-related programmes.

We must all commend the team responsible for putting together this amazing week of activities culminating in this awards ceremony.

We are greatly encouraged by the innovation of young Nigerians and your resilience. We are on the right path. I strongly believe that what we are seeing today, once we improve our business environment and it gets better, improve access to credit for many of our young businesses, unleash all these waiting talents and creativity, our country will certainly never be the same.

Let me leave you with President Muhammadu Buhari’s words of commitment to MSMEs in Nigeria: he said “we will continue to stand by you, to support you, and create opportunities for you to grow and prosper. This is our commitment to small businesses in Nigeria.”

Thank you all very much for listening.