Poor Financial Literacy Threatens MSMEs’ Growth – Minister

• Poor Financial Literacy Threatens MSMEs’ Growth – Minister

The Minister of State for Industry, Trade and Investment, Aisha Abubakar, on Thursday said there was a need to urgently address the poor level of financial literacy among operators of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises in the country.

Abubakar, who said this in Abuja at the FATE Foundation 4th Policy Dialogue Series on Entrepreneurship, noted that if left unchecked, the poor level of financial literacy among small business owners could threaten the growth of the MSME sector.

The event had as its theme, ‘Building sustainable businesses: The case for deepening financial literacy’.

The minister said while the MSME sector was the engine of economic growth, its impact on the Nigerian economy was being constrained as a result of financial literacy issues.

She stated, “Nigeria is blessed with a strong entrepreneurial culture and can rightly be referred to as one of Africa’s leading entrepreneurship hubs.

“Despite the inherent benefits in this large pool of MSMEs, their viability and growth are continually threatened by a number of factors that have a strong correlation with capacity limitation in general and poor financial literacy in particular.

“Government’s efforts at unlocking access for MSMEs through strategic institutions such as the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Bank of Industry and other development finance institutions have not achieved the desired impact as the MSMEs have, according to development experts, consistently failed to provide financial information that is required to evaluate their investment requests.”