Funding, capacity training limit micro businesses from growing to SMEs—Rahama, SMEDAN boss

The Director-General of Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agency (SMEDAN), Dikko Rahama has identified why over 90 per cent of micro businesses cannot comfortably migrate to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

According to him, many of the businesses in Nigeria that are supposed to be SMEs by status still remain micro businesses.

Speaking in Lagos Wednesday, he said he traced the limiting factors to include poor capital base and lack of capacity training on models of business expansion.

He also disclosed that many of the micro business operators lacked financial inclusion which further limits their chances of accessing loans to grow the businesses.

Dikko however expressed the readiness of his agency to organize training workshops for micro business operators on a regular basis, saying his agency will begin to develop a database of all micro businesses in other drill them on the best ways to grow and expand their businesses.

He lamented that many of the budding business will remain in their small state for too long because of lack of business development training and poor capital base.

He said many of them operate their business with less than N100,000.