By Sikiru Obarayese
Osun State Commissioner for Commerce, Industries and Cooperatives, Honourable Ismaila Jayeoba-Alagbada has said that the administration of Governor Rauf Aregbesola has disbursed N4.5billion to 27,352 beneficiaries to boost Small and Medium Enterprises (SME).
He said it was done under the combined scheme sponsored by the state government of Osun and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), tagged Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Fund (CBN-MSME Development Fund) to boost the economy of the state
The Commissioner said the State Government, through its Microcredit Agency, had undertaken another ground-breaking step towards tackling the issue of MSME financing as the agency has implemented a digital transformation project aimed at improving efficiency, raising standards of people-centred service delivery, adopting global risk management and improving operational transparency.
Alagbada disclosed that the state government focused on SME in order to keep this vital segment of the economy in active operation for the purposes of growing the economy.
He said government established Osun Micro-credit Agency to effectively and efficiently render micro-credit delivery services to all small scale business operators.
The sectors covered in the disbursement of this micro-credit include, commerce, agriculture, manufacturing, education, health, hotel and hospitality and other businesses operated by the artisans; and the beneficiaries of the soft loans are spread across the local government areas of the state.
The Commissioner stated that the Aregbesola’s government provided the initial sum of N100 million disbursable fund while the CBN added N2 billion.
According to the statistics indicating beneficiaries and the sum allocated, commerce and agriculture took the lion share of the disbursement as follows; Commerce has 12,531 beneficiaries with N2 billion disbursed while Agriculture disbursed N1.58 billion to 9,796 beneficiaries.
Other sectors include: Manufacturing which shared N472 million to 2,661 beneficiaries; 1,886 Artisans also received N472 million; 248 beneficiaries in the education sector got N53.57 million to 248 beneficiaries; Health: N59.72 million to 223 beneficiaries; while Hotel and Hospitality got N7.29 million distributed to seven beneficiaries respectively.
