By Our Correspondent
The Enugu State Government has unveiled a Business Digitalization Programme for Youths and Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) owners in the state.
The programme is a collaboration by the state government, GFA Technologies and the WEMA Bank.
While unveiling the programme in Enugu, the Commissioner for Youth and sports, Barrister Ike Ekweremmadu, said that the programme was aimed at creating an enabling business environment for the people of the state.
Ekweremmadu, who represented Governor Peter Mbah, said this was part of the governor’s determination and commitment to grow the economy of the state by making the state investment destination.
He said that the migration from analogue to the digital business had become the fastest means of growing SMEs across the globe.
“Our Youths and SMEs operators should leverage on the social media space to expand their businesses.
“Migration from offline to online improves your businesses: improves competitiveness; it accelerates your feedback mechanism and scale up your businesses, ” he said.
The commissioner said that digital business provided young people with the opportunity to scale up their businesses and increases their revenue potentials.
Speaking, the Co-Founder and CEO of GFA Technologies, Mr Tunji Oke, said the programme was meant to create employment for the youths of the state inline with Governor Petet Mbah’s vision.
“We are committed to partnering Enugu State to solving the problem of unemployment in the state and Nigeria in general.
“If we want Enugu State to grow we must provide a means of growing the SMEs in the state, ” he said.
Oke said that, for the state to achieve it’s potentials, there was the need to grow SMEs by empowering and supporting them.
According to him, the programme targeted seven categories of SMEs, who are going to benefit in the exercise.
Mr Precious Inikore, Branch Manager of WEMA Bank Enugu, disclosed that the bank was going to sponsor the beneficiaries of the programme with soft loans to accelerate their business growth.
He said that beneficiaries could access loans from upto N100,000 to N20 million with very little collaterals.
“WEMA is very happy to partner with Enugu State government and GFA.
“We are going to provide funding for this programme without tangible collaterals for upto N20 million and this is planned for a period of time, ” he said.
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