By Adedapo Adesanya
Taking interests in entrepreneurship, particularly the cottage industry and other small-scale businesses can help boost and finance the 2020 budget. This was the stance of initiator of One Community One Industry Initiative, Ms Victoria Oluwaseun, while speaking at the end of the Community Mega Agropreneurship skill acquisition training in Ikire, Osun State.
Ms Oluwaseun said one of the ways to realise revenue for budget financing is to encourage local contents that would help people pay back to the government.
Using the initiative’s training scheme as a case study, she noted that people were trained on converting agricultural wastes, including banana stuck, palm kernel wastes, coconut and cocoa pods to wealth, through production of locally-made materials like soap, coconut oil, locust beans and packaging bags, among others.
She also said that entrepreneurship would go a long way in doing a lot for the country, however, some of the strict government policies for registration and operations were some of the problems encountered.
“Budget financing anywhere in the world should be majorly through taxation, but it is only those who have sources of income that can pay taxes.” she said.
She then called that these policies causing disregard for local contents should be reviewed.
“As a result, the government should strive to encourage cottage industries, particularly in local communities, to train residents and develop policies that would make their products acceptable.
“There are things we produce locally for consumption and domestic use that are far better and healthier than what we import, but many of our policies have not allowed them to thrive.
This is contributing to the poor implementation of our budget because the government does not have enough to finance it as the people can only pay taxes when they have source or sources of income.” She added.
On their part, entrepreneurs have been tasked to package anything produced locally to make it appealing and acceptable for consumption.
Dipo Olowookere