When you talk to owners of SMEs, most will tell you how funding is their major issue.
Probe further and you will realise that she doesnt even know how much she needs to access. She doesn’t know what her annual profit was last year and cant say exactly why she thinks she needs money except that she needs to restock or build a bigger plant or get that latest equipment that Company B has.
Ask her for her audited report, when last she filed her annual returns, evidence of tax payment including PAYE and other statutory requirements and the story starts.
Except for family and friends I don’t know who will loan anybody money without documentation.
We are Business Development Service providers for USAID and BoI. USAID is willing to give the successful applicant half of the funds their business requires (agric business) as a grant while BoI charges about 10% interest (compared with over 25% in commercial Banks) but both funds are just there with only a few people accessing them. Mostly because SMEs cant take the time to do things right.
I had a conversation with someone from DFID recently on why only 6 Companies were short listed for their grant in Nigeria. He told me that of the applications from the 6 West African countries being considered, 75% came from Nigeria. After review only 6 were found to have all it takes to access these grants.
I can attest to this. Of the over 100 applications we have processed for Bank of Industry (BoI) we have only submitted one and that was by fire by force.
If you are an SME owner, in manufacturing, agriculture, IT, entertainment, logistics as part of the supply chain end of any of these industries, you have storage space along Lagos-Kano corridor and are in agricultural research, kindly send me a mail on enquiries@ht-limitedng.net or me@feyikemiodunuga.com
