Small industries not affected by economic downturn – NASSI President

Engineer Ezekiel Essien is the National President of Small Scale Industrialists (NASSI). In this exclusive interview with he says most small scale industries in Nigeria are not affected by the current downturn in the economy. He also speaks on challenges

Are small scale industries affected by the downturn in the economy?

Most of our businesses have very little to do with importation of materials, small scale industries use locally sourced materials. The downturn does not affect our businesses so much. So, our members that have folded their businesses are not more than 5 percent of our number.

You launched collaboration with the Standard Organisation of Nigeria to standardise products manufactured in Nigeria by small scale industries. What informed the collaboration?

The diversification drive of the federal government informed it. We are turning away from oil to agriculture and solid minerals. Since agriculture produce are our major sources of income and raw materials for industries, we have realised that standardising our products is key to improving the quality of our products. This is because you can plant and harvest but, at the end, you process it into finished or semi-finished product, if the standard is not there, it will not go anywhere and you will lose out completely. Collaboration will help us standardise our products. The standard organisation will correct us and train our members on the required standard.

What is impeding standard of products manufactured locally?

Lack of capacity building also impedes standards. The machines you use to reduce products and the process of processing products determine the standard and quality. You need to be shown what to do. You need to be introduced to the type of modern machinery to procure. If someone is producing pure water manually and is sealing it manually, there will be contamination. But if you use machine, the pure water is produced and sealed without you getting in contact and contamination will not be there.

What the major challenge small scale industrialists face in exporting their products outside Nigeria? is

The major challenge is product certification. If you product is not certificated, if the product gets to the international market, it is returned. One of the major reason industrialists lose is because of this certification. If they do not certify your product, you may not be able to sell. A lot of small scale industrialists have not had their products certificated. This is why we are collaborating with the SON to solve the problem.

Access to finance has been major problem to most small industries. How far have you gone in solving the problem?

When we met with the BOI, we identified one problem, which was capacity building. Previously, We want our members to get some level of training on managing finance and certifying their products. When we get certified by the SON, it is also a form of guaranteeing that our products are good and we can get access to finance. Once that is done, we can submit it to the BOI or we can submit it through SMEDAN. We have been thinking of ways of getting collateral and small industries don’t have collateral. This is an indirect way of providing collateral because that trust is going to be there.

Do you get support from SMEDAN to improve your production at the small scale industry level?

SMEDAN has not done much on that. SMEDAN is poorly funded by the federal government. SMEDAN is supposed to collaborate with the CBN. There is international fund that come in the form of grants and some banks use SMEs to access the funds. If SMEDAN plays its role the way it should, it should know all these things. It should know that this fund is meant for SMEs. For instance, NASSI went into MoU with First Bank, we contributed over N80m and then the bank used this MoU as a supporting document to get $100m from the Bank of China. And when they came back, they turned their back on small scale industries.