FirstBank, SMEDAN Sign MoU to promote SMEs, boost economic growth

First Bank of Nigeria (FBN), and the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to promote Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the country and the nation’s economic growth.

The MoU was signed on Wednesday at FirstBank headquarters, Marina, Lagos.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO), of First Bank, Dr Adesola Adeduntan, who was represented by the Executive Director, Chief Risk Officer (CRO), of First Bank, Mr Segun Alebiosu, said: At FirstBank, we understand the critical roles that SMEs play in the growth of a nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) through diversification of the economy, job creation, wealth distribution, and social stability. 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, we disbursed about N455 billion in value, via tailor-made loan products to support SMEs in various industry segments and 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.”

Adeduntan commended the amazing work that SMEDAN is doing with the MSMEs sub-sector in Nigeria by linking MSMEs to internal and external sources of finance, appropriate technology, and technical skills which is one of the biggest motivations that inspired it to embark on the partnership engagement.

He congratulated everyone for being witnesses of this budding life-changing opportunity, saying, “As we deliberate on the value propositions of this partnership, I encourage everyone to see the big picture of FirstBank being the credible partner for SMEDAN.”

Also speaking is the Director General,(DG) of SMEDAN, Olawale Fasanya, who stated that SMEDAN was happy to be partnering with First Bank in promoting the group’s SMEs in the country.

Fasanya noted that trust is the major issue affecting the growth of SMEs and most times when the people know that the government is involved, they see it as a dividend of democracy not to pay back.

According to him, “We are trying our best to play a lot of advocacy to let SMEs know that there is no free money anywhere and also to discourage the government from being directly involved in lending to SMEs.”

SMEDAN DG explained that at SMEDAN, we believe access to finance is still a major challenge in the country, especially, for those who are just going into business and the aspiring, adding that, “we bank see that it is micro or nano business, they do not want to touch that aspect and these settings are in the majority of the population.”

On the aspect of infrastructure, he said: “SMEDAN is not in control of that, but we have the plan to create a common facility, which will take care of infrastructure problem where SMEs do not need to invest in generators or offices but can come there and used for production, then go and sell afterward.”