Banking Briefs
NNAMDI Okonkwo, managing director, Fidelity Bank Plc, has advised young entrepreneurs to adhere to corporate governance principles, proper book-keeping among other best practices for their businesses to survive. He said most of the companies that employ thousands of persons in the country today started as small and medium entreprises, SMEs.
The managing director, who made this remark at the 2017 Africa’s Young Entrepreneurs conference titled: “Networking with the Giants,” regretted that most SMEs in the country die prematurely. “The issue is how many of such SMEs die prematurely and why do they die prematurely? They die prematurely because of infrastructural constraints, lack of access to markets and a couple of other things.
“That is why at Fidelity Bank, about seven years ago, we decided to support SMEs in a different manner by setting up a unit to managed SMEs. We did that because the fundamentals of why businesses fail is not just about financing alone. You must know what to do with the finance. You must know even simple booking-keeping practices,” he said.
According to him, supporting SMEs would help the federal government in its quest to diversify the economy. He put the total number of SMEs in the country presently at 37,000 million, saying they employ between 60-80 percent of the workforce in the country. “We are glad to note that given the recession that the country is just coming out from, a lot of people have gone into various types of SME businesses and we are happy to note that a lot of young Nigerians are now taking to self-employment.”
He urged young entrepreneurs to embrace proper business planning, so as to survive in any sector they chose to operate in. “Another issue is poor corporate governance. Have you asked yourself about all those big names we knew when we were growing up, where are they today?
“So, the question is why do family businesses fail? Poor corporate governance, no succession plan and that is why such businesses don’t grow beyond the operators. You need to bring equity investors and step aside to let that business thrive. Beyond this, the access to suitable finance is also important for SMEs,” he said.
– Dec 8, 2017 @ 14:35 GMT |
Tags: Fidelity Bank Plc Fidelity's Guide for Successful Entrepreneurship Nnamdi Okonkwo
