SMEDAN wants MSMEs operators registered.

Chief Femi Pedro, the Chairman Governing Board of Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), has urged Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in all categories to register on the SMEDAN website to benefit from the existing national policy for MSMEs.

Pedro stated this on Wednesday in Ibadan during a virtual validation of the National Policy on MSMEs.

He commended the director- general of agency and other management staff for putting the event together.

Pedro, however, said “SMEDAN has a registration system which is online and made available free of charge for all MSMEs in all categories.

“I enjoined people to go online to register on www.smedanregister.gov.ng and you will see a form there to fill as an MSMEs; it takes just less than five minutes to complete it.

“SMEDAN will give you a unique identification number and in the form questions are asked whether you are registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) or not.

“If you are not yet registered with CAC, SMEDAN will assist you in registering your business at a very cheap rate.

“The information made available will help us and the Federal Government to be able to marshal and implement the existing national policy on MSMEs.

“We want all the over 40 million MSMEs in Nigeria to be registered with SMEDAN, it makes SMEDAN work a lot easier and implementation will be easier.

“Also it will help us to achieve our objectives.”

He assured the stakeholders that the Governing Board of SMEDAN will take the implementation of the national policy very seriously.

“When we all get together four years from now, we will have lots of exciting things to say about how the policy has been implemented,” he said.

In his remarks, Dr Samuel Adebiyi, the consultant who spoke on the new policy said “the point of integrating MSMEs to the public procurement system is also clearly provided in the new policy in fact with more bite now.

“Because it has always been in the policy; it was in the first policy and second version which was a revised version of the first and up till now, we have not seen the effect which is bringing us to a point raised that implementation is key.

“So, the issue of public procurement of MSMEs products and services by Federal Government and state governments require further action.

“In this revised policy it is also identified in the implementation metrics that there is a timeline, there is an activity to be undertaken, there are stakeholders assigned to do it and there is a system to measure that it has been done.

“Let’s just hope that as the new policy is being implemented we will find a better story to tell about the MSMEs activities in Nigeria.”

Also, Mr Wole Fasanya, Director Policy, Planning and Monitoring Evaluation SMEDAN, appreciated those who had sent their contributions on the new policy being formulated.

He assured them that the various contributions will be looked at to enrich the document that will be passed through the minister to the Federal Executive Council for approval.

Fasanya noted “in the meantime, we will note most state committees that are moribund.

“We will find a way to get them reactivated.

“We will also get the number of states that have not stated their own committees and find a way to nudge them to form their committee.

“As noted it is not governors that chair the committee in most states it is either the deputy governor or the commissioner.

“This time around, we are going to do it through Public Private Partnerships as we said.

“It is going to involve more private sector players so that it will be more efficient and effective.

“Also, with the turnout now, we will as time goes on, interact more with a number of stakeholders, especially those listed in the implementation mandate.

“We are not going to wait until the policy is being implemented before we engage them more.”

Supreme reports that the virtual validation of the National Policy on MSMEs was attended by stakeholders across the country.