First Bank of Nigeria Ltd. has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), to develop and promote the Macro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) subsector.
The Chief Executive Officer, FirstBank, Dr Adesola Adeduntan, at the signing of the agreement on Wednesday, said the partnership would change not just the bank and SMEDAN, but the fortunes of Nigeria.
He noted that SMEs play critical roles in the growth of a nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) through diversification of the economy, job creation, wealth distribution and social stability.
He said: “This is one of the driving forces behind our SME Connect initiative through which we offer bespoke financing and non-financing solutions to meet the needs of our growing SME community.
“For instance, in 2022, FirstBank disbursed about N455 billion in values, via tailor-made loan products to support SMEs in various industry segments.
“We have also continued to deploy various innovative e-payment products and services to aid SMEs’ trade and collections and in the process, create a seamless experience of doing business.
“I commend the amazing work that SMEDAN is doing with the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises subsector in Nigeria.
“Your mandate of linking MSMEs to internal and external sources of finance, appropriate technology, and technical skills is one of the biggest motivations that inspired us to embark on this partnership engagement.
“Leveraging our SME Connect initiative, the large community of SMEs managed by SMEDAN, will be exposed to our product and service offerings aimed at growing their businesses and expanding its scope and scalability.”
Adeduntan, represented by the Executive Director, Chief Risk Officer, Olusegun Alebiosu, said the partnership would also enable the bank and SMEDAN to accelerate digitisation and development of the SME subsector toward increasing its contribution and impact to the national economy.
“The teeming community of SMEs will be exposed to training, workshops, mentorship programmes, financial and non-financial interventions needed for up-scaling their businesses through the entire value chain,” he said.
Leveraging our SME Connect initiative, the large community of SMEs managed by SMEDAN, will be exposed to our product and service offerings aimed at growing their businesses and expanding its scope and scalability.
Also speaking, the Director-General of SMEDAN, Olawale Fasanya, expressed joy at First Bank’s readiness to support their development.
He said: “But unfortunately, finance is a major issue, especially for those that are just going into business and then the aspiring ones.
“Then when we look at the nature of the Nano and micro businesses, you know banks don’t want to touch them, and they are the ones in the majority.
“So, when we have this kind of Memorandum of Understanding where we can work with banks that are ready to, at least, fund the ones that we feel are credible and will be able to pay back, we are usually very happy to enter into this kind of agreement.
“But, we also know that we have to do a lot of work to make sure that if we are recommending anybody, they are people that will be able to prove they are trustworthy,” he said.
He disclosed that SMEDAN is discussing with the government to see how to initiate credit guarantee schemes that would help SMEs, who might default.
He said the agency is also trying to assemble them into cooperatives, to make it easy for those in the same value chain to source their raw materials as a group.
He also promised to provide a common facility for operators in the Garment, Furniture and Packaging sector, where SMEDAN plans to inaugurate common facility centres for MSMEs’ operators in the country.
