Medium, Small and Micro-sized Enterprises (MSMEs) face myriads of challenges that inhibit their competitiveness. These include poor technical and business management skills, poor access to market information, poor access to finance and inability to produce right quality and quantity to meet demands among others.
PIND’s business linkages interventions focus on improving the business outcomes and competitiveness of small businesses by providing access to market linkages, finance and business advisory services to select Niger Delta-based small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) in all the States. We do not do this by ourselves. Rather, we find and incentivize the business service support market actor to perform these functions.
Business Service Providers Improved Competitiveness of Small and Medium Enterprises: Since 2014, PIND identified and built the capacity of 19 Business Service Providers (BSPs) to provide services to the Medium, Small and Micro- Enterprises (MSMEs) to help boost their businesses through access to finance, business linkages and other ancillary support. 10 of the 19 BSPs are currently providing their services commercially to SMEs.
In 2017, these BSPs worked to help small businesses access loans, provided them business advisory services, trained them on record-keeping, linked them to new markets and enabled them to access PIND’s Technical Assistance Fund (TAF) to support their business. As of the end of 2017, they had reached 1,502 MSMEs with capacity strengthening and other ancillary supports.
Also during the year, to improve the quality of loan made by the Micro Finance Banks (MFBs) and thus reduce their high ratio of non-performing loans, PIND assisted the Delta State Medium, Small and Micro-sized Enterprises (MSME) Agency to develop and implement a new loan process guide for the Agency and participating Micro Finance Banks (MFBs).
They trained 11 MFBs across Delta State on loan program administration and recovery, seven (7) of which have started using the guide and tools to appraise new loans to ensure the right businesses are getting funded.
In 2016, we organized the Port Harcourt business linkage forum as platform for businesses around the Port Harcourt axis to network with large buyers of goods and services, financial institutions and business development services providers. In 2017, one of our BSPs, Wider Perspectives Limited collaborated with the Port Harcourt Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (PHCCIMA) to hold the second edition of the Forum without any financial contribution from PIND, showing a good example of our approach in getting market actors to take ownership of value adding initiatives. Over 100 SMEs, financial institutions and large buyers of goods and services attended the Forum.
Some investments we facilitated:
- Zada Farms Invested N13million to procure chicken processing equipment from S. Adiss Engineering in Ibadan.
- Broad Global Limited, promoters of Telabib farms, invested N81 million (that is US$224,955) to order for feed mill and cold room equipment for the Telabib chicken processing project in Delta state.
- The Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) committed about N180 million to support the Perfect Works poultry initiative in Ondo State.
DOWNLOAD REPORT HERE PIND 2017 Annual Report (3739 downloads )
