Lack of information hindering entrepreneurs from accessing govt funds
Lack of information on basic government programmes has been identified as one of the reasons MSMEs have not been able to access government financial interventions The Director-General of the Global Centre for Human Empowerment and Entrepreneurship Development (GLOCHEED), Mrs Rose D.S Gyar, stated this at a one-day seminar on citizens engagement to facilitate access to […]
Lack of information on basic government programmes has been identified as one of the reasons MSMEs have not been able to access government financial interventions
The Director-General of the Global Centre for Human Empowerment and Entrepreneurship Development (GLOCHEED), Mrs Rose D.S Gyar, stated this at a one-day seminar on citizens engagement to facilitate access to finance for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) held in Abuja yesterday.
“We discovered that the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP) MarketMoni scheme has gone into implementation for over a year but some of the people who are the targeted beneficiaries have still not heard about GEEP,”she said.
Gyar said because GLOCHEED works with MSMEs to promote their competitiveness, and key to that is access to finance, it decided to form clusters whereby information could reach the businesses wherever they were.
“So we decided that rather than waiting for MSMEs to come and get the information, why don’t we take the information to their doorsteps, and taking this information to their doorsteps means meeting them at the point of their businesses.
“So, we identified clusters were we would establish common business information centres, so that anytime there are government information/interventions, we can deploy them to that centre and the centre gets it across to individuals so that participation and awareness can be inclusive,”she said.
Gyar said it will take advantage of the availability of internet service and phones to disseminate such messages through text messages and Whatsapp.
A Federal Partnership Facilitator at the DFID Partnership to Engage, Reform and Learn Programme (PERL), Onyi Ough, whose organisation co-hosted the event said there was need to get information on government interventions to the grassroots.
“We want the people at the grassroots to get access to information on government interventions. CBN, BOI have funds, there has to be some mechanism were citizens can get information. So that is why we are partnering with GLOCHEED to do this,” she said.