Obi Urges Commonwealth Nations To Prioritise SMEs

Presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 election, Mr Peter Obi, has urged the Commonwealth of Nations to pay special attention to small businesses.

This, he said, would enable them to achieve sustainable growth and development across their countries.

Obi, a former governor of Anambra State, underscored the importance of Small and Medium Enterprises SMEs to global economic growth and rapid expansion.

Obi made the remarks in a statement in Lagos yesterday.

He said this at a global conference organized by the Bangladesh Government in conjunction with the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council, in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Obi also explained why small businesses were the engine of growth across the globe, especially in areas of job creation, innovation, and domestic investment.

“If we enhance the functionality and impacts of SMEs across Commonwealth countries through formalisation and internationalisation, we would have done it across the world with lives, communities, and economies positively impacted.

“Endowed with a population of about 2.5 billion people, a home to over a billion young consumers and exports of over $1 trillion, the need for better support for SMEs cannot be over-emphasised.

“The small businesses, especially in developing and emerging markets, face many challenges arising from a lack of formalisation and internationalization.

“Therefore, many small businesses are not registered and licensed and lack international affiliations and barely exploit the benefits of international trade, which limits the growth opportunities of both the SMEs and the countries.

“To harness the full contributions and impacts of SMEs, proper reforms such as formalisation and internationalization are needed to address the identified challenges,” he said.

Obi explained that formalisation involved bringing SMEs into the formal economy through registration of their businesses and complying with legal and regulatory requirements.

He said expectedly, the process of formalisation would be beneficial not only to the SMEs but the overall business environment and economic stability.

The former governor added that such significant segments of SMEs operated in the informal sector due to a lack of resources or awareness of the formalization benefits.

The labour party presidential candidate argued in his address at the international conference that SMEs were emerging as the undisputed engine of rapid economic expansion and growth globally.

Obi noted that “World Bank records (2020) showed that SMEs account for roughly 90 percent of businesses and more than 50 per cent of jobs created globally.” (NAN)