TheCable

The federal government is set to begin the fourth round of the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) survey.

Yemi Kale, statistician-general of the federation and chief executive officer, National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), announced this on Thursday at a media briefing in Abuja.

He said the exercise would be carried out in 36 states and the FCT and cover 2019 and 2020.

He noted that the survey would begin on Monday with a train-the-trainers workshop, while fieldwork would commence on August 21.

Kale, represented by Adeyemi Adeniran, director of real sector and household statistics department at NBS, explained that three surveys had been successfully carried out in 2010, 2013 and 2017.

In the fourth round, he said “Nano enterprises,” a concept considered as micro-enterprises would be introduced.

“The new sub-division (Nano) refers to those enterprises that have only one or two persons engaged in their operations, while the micro-enterprises are those enterprises with three to nine persons engaged in their operations,” NAN quoted Kale to have said.

“On this note, the survey will, henceforth, be called NMSMEs survey. In addition, a new module was introduced into the survey, which is the impact of COVID-19 on business operations.

“It seeks to identify how enterprises coped during the pandemic period and what areas of support and intervention they will require from government at this post-COVID lockdown period.”

Kale said the survey would help to establish a credible and reliable database for the MSMEs.

He also added that it would help to assess the contributions of the MSMEs sub-sector to gross domestic product (GDP) and identify the number of MSMEs owned on a gender basis.

“The survey will also identify the skills gap in the sector; ascertain top priority areas that need government interventions and assistance and identify possible financing windows to raise low-cost financing,’’ he added.

In his remarks, Dikko Radda, director-general, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), said that MSMEs are crucial to the sustainable growth of the economy.

He said the last survey indicated that the sub-sector contributed 49.78 per cent to the nation’s GDP.

According to him, they also accounted for more than 76 percent of total employment and contributed 7.64 percent to total export.

Radda said that the surveys gave SMEDAN the leverage to prepare programmes that would have an impact on the sub-sector.

He said, however, that as important as the sub-sector was, it was still faced with challenges that impeded its start, growth and sustainability.

“One of the key challenges that have limited the development and growth in the sub-sector is the absence of up-to-date and usable data of MSMEs,” Radda explained.

“Unfortunately, the inclusive, effective and sustainable development of the sub-sector is largely dependent on the availability of usable data.

“The exercise will necessitate visits to MSMEs across the country, and we solicit the cooperation of all actors in the MSMEs space as our enumerators will soon come to administer questionnaires.”