THE EMPOWERING OF SMALL AND MEDIUM SCALE ENTERPRISES FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT – A STUDY OF SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES IN LAGOS
ABSTRACT
A significant aspect of small and medium scale enterprises is in the following developing areas, creation of employment, stimulation of indigenous entrepreneurship, transformation of traditional industry, linkage effort, contribution to regional activities or cooperation, utilization and multinationalisation of indigenous enterprises. Thus, government, agencies, corporate organizations, international sponsors, etc are expected to adequately provide or empower SMEs for sustainable economic (activities that guarantees) development and growth. This study therefore seeks to address the following issues – The enabling environment by government to small and medium scale enterprises are not always complete in any particular empowerment. In other words, transport and electricity may be available while water, communication, educational infrastructure, etc may not be available or inadequate. Thus, no environments are comprehensive or complete in any small and medium scale industry. Hostility in an operating environment (by government, or communities) often make the efforts and expectation of tile small and medium scale enterprises unrealistic. Other problems in realizing the objectives of government’s empowerment to small and medium scale enterprises are unregulated competition and inconsistencies in policies and programmes. The major data collection instrument to be use is the questionnaire. It will be structured with a four point likert scale to determine responses to the objective of the study. At the end of the study it was observed that, resources available for empowering SMEs in the Nigerian economy may not be considered adequate, that stringent regulatory controls of government on SM Es may affect their growth and development, that inability of SMEs to loans and other financial assistance may cause their failure, that absence of research and development on the activities of SMEs may affect their growth and development. it was therefore recommendations that, every effort should be given to discourage the difficulties of access to funds set aside for SMEs by financial institutions or the direct loans occasionally extended to them by the government by way of empowerment for stainable development, regular training and retraining should be provided, for SMEs to reduce the perennial problems of inadequate managerial capacity and poor quality services and products. To this regard, facilities should be adequate for training and developing the human resources (managers) needed in translating business in the right question in an empowerment for stainable development.
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