MSMEs: Synchronising policies with checks and balances to foreclose objective defeats

The strains on the Nigerian economy recently have called for the need for special interventions. The vagaries of oil prices and the attendant instability effects on the economy, have compounded with such unhealthy circumstances as the COVID-19 pandemic, to further enmesh the Country’s economy into the mire of wobbling deformities. The hostile circumstances pushing the economy headlong for the precipice, have left businesses at the edge of unsavoury narratives. The need for intervention has become non-negotiable as many businesses suffer the risk of going moribund while several have fallen into ill fate, having folded up. The small businesses, by and large, have been the worst affected as thousands of businesses remain at the verge of struggling with strains clogging up as threats of liquidation to them.

The call for intervention for small businesses is a reasonable one. While the Federal Government through the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has made efforts towards the necessity with provisions of grants, loans and other palliatives to small business holdings exposed to the harsh conditions posing threatening risks of liquidation, it is essential to state that such interventions demand stronger coordination of measures to ensure that the intended results are not defeated.

Recently, the Federal Government had disclosed that it had disbursed over N56.8 billion to beneficiaries of its Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) Survival Fund. Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Mariam Katagum, who disclosed this at the flag-off of the Guaranteed Off-Take scheme recently in Abuja, had said the Guaranteed Off-take Scheme was one of the last tracks of the MSME Survival Fund Scheme under the Nigeria Economic Sustainability Plan (NESP). According to the Minister, the implementation of the MSME Survival Fund across the initial four tracks – Payroll Support Scheme, Artisan and Transport Scheme, Formalisation Support Scheme and General MSME Grants have all yielded positive results.

“Under the Payroll Support Scheme, our initial target was to reach 500,000 beneficiaries. Our current standing is put at 459,334 successful beneficiaries across the 36 States and the FCT. Out of this number, we have recorded 43% female-owned businesses and 3% special needs. The Artisan and Transport Scheme had an initial target of 333,000 Artisan and Transport beneficiaries. We currently stand at 293,336 successful beneficiaries across the 36 States and the FCT. The CAC Formalisation Support Scheme set out to register 250,000 new businesses and I can report that to date, 244,162 small and growing enterprises have been successfully registered free of charge, across the 36 States and the FCT. Also, the General MSME Grants Scheme had its initial target set at 100,000 MSMEs and we have successfully completed the provision of grants to a total of 82,491 till date. To date we have successfully disbursed the sum of N56,842,780,000.00 to 1,079,323 (including those registered under CAC),” she had said.

On the details of the Guaranteed Off-take scheme, the Minister had exposed that the scheme was conceived as part of the Federal Government’s interventions to assist small and growing businesses that were negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. She was quoted: “It is important to inform you at this point that this track had an initial target of 100,000 MSMEs across the Country. By the time the portal closed, we had received a total of 65,976 applications across the country out of which we have verified and pre-qualified 50,032 MSMEs that we are presently processing to off-take their products.” According to the MSME Survival Fund Project Coordinator, Tola Adekunle, the total value of each Grant to individual beneficiary was N100,000.

It would be recalled that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had earlier this month disclosed that it had received over eight million applications from Nigerians for its COVID-19 Targeted Credit Facility to help households and businesses. The Director, Corporate Communications Department of the apex bank, Mr Osita Nwanisiobi, had  early in September while fielding questions from journalists in Enugu during a one-day interactive enlightenment session with the organised labour and civil society groups on the five-year policy thrust of the CBN, said that over 600,000 applicants had benefited from the various COVID-19-induced interventions so far. He was quoted: “We started with about N50bn. We moved to N100bn, to N300bn; today; we are talking about N400bn. Now, the number of applications that we have is over eight million applications and we have done over 600,000. Now, will people complain that they haven’t received it? The answer is yes; you see the number and then you see what we are doing.The reality is that we are not resting on our oars. The governor is actually very passionate because he has also seen that what we have done in this regard also help Nigerians exit recession and to post the kind of GDP that we have posted and so he is poised to do more.”

The need to build strong monitoring structures around the interventions for affected businesses is sacrosanct to guide against the common narratives of having the purpose of the schemes defeated and their intended effects on the economy unrealised. The norm of failures of intervention to yield the expected results by their set goals and  objectives, remain a subject demanding strategic inputs to change the narratives. It is arguable that in as much as the prevailing system is left unrefined, the schemes may not far be better than the poor results of past efforts and policies directed towards this end. It is, therefore, essential that strong strategies be deployed to craft out structures of evaluation, feedback and assessment for closely monitoring strictly the processes, movement, subscription and impacts of the schemes synchronised with prompt schedules to ascertain their effectiveness in an unbroken chain of coordinated patterns to guide against lacunae that may frustrate the intended results.