50% of Micro Businesses Owned by Nigerians under 35—Osinbajo

By Aduragbemi Omiyale

Nigeria’s Vice President, Mr Yemi Osinbajo, has said almost 50 per cent of micro-businesses in the country are owned by people under the age of 35.

Mr Osinbajo made this disclosure on Monday when he virtually launched the 2021 Bank of Industry (BOI) SME Academy, organised in conjunction with Procter & Gamble (P&G).

He described the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) sector as the bedrock of the nation’s economy, noting that this is why the federal government is paying a special focus on the industry.

“This administration is determined to support small businesses because we know that this is the way of growth and prosperity for our people and that support is now even more necessary in the wake of the economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic,” the Vice President said.

According to him, the impact of the global health crisis on businesses in the country spurred the federal government to come up with the MSME Survival Fund scheme.

He said the initiative, which is under the Economic Sustainability Plan (ESP), is designed to support vulnerable MSMEs in meeting their payroll obligations and safeguard jobs in the sector.

Tracks under the Survival Fund include the payroll support, artisan and transport support grants, formalisation support (free CAC business names’ registration), guaranteed offtake stimulus scheme and the general MSME grants, he said.

Mr Osinbajo stated that the government put all these in place because it wanted to assist the youths as “almost 50 per cent of micro-businesses are owned by young people – Nigerians under the age of 35 – so it is encouraging to note that young Nigerians made up 82 per cent of payroll support scheme recipients and have reported that for the first time in a long time, Nigerian MSMEs are satisfied with the transparent and seamless implementation of a federal government scheme.”

Buttressing his point on acceptance of the scheme by Nigerians, the Vice President said when the registration portal first opened for 6 weeks, “we received 463,000 applications, but once the implementation of the scheme began and the portal reopened within one week, we received 892,000 applications.”

He assured that the government will continue to support the sector as it is very convincing that “MSMEs truly are the engines of growth in our economy.”

Mr Osinbajo noted that MSMEs “contribute 48 per cent of national Gross Domestic Products (GDP), account for 96 per cent of all businesses and 84 per cent of employment.”

“Also, there are about 17.4 million MSMEs in the country, accounting for 50 per cent of our industrial jobs and nearly 90 per cent of the jobs in our manufacturing sector,” he added.