The United Nations Industrial Development Organization – Investment and Technology Promotion Office (UNIDO-ITPO), says it will focus on developing Business Incubation Management System (BIMS) and counseling for Nigerian businesses, most especially small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs).
At a meeting with government agencies in Abuja, the Chief Technical Adviser of UNIDO-ITPO, Mr. Stanislaw Pigon explained that the aim of BIMS is to foster enterprise and investment promotion across every sphere of the business strata in Nigeria. The focus on enterprise development resulted from the discovery that investors in Nigeria did not have the desired skill and knowledge of enterprise development and that it had affected Nigeria’s economic growth.
Pigon highlighted the inaccessibility of finance as one of the problems faced by SMEs. This is because people in financial institutions don’t understand their needs. The goal is to move from the entrepreneurs to those who should assist them in the proper way,” he further explained.
UNIDO-ITPO said it was training professionals of various associations in the private sector, financial institutions, and governmental investment promotion institutions, so that they would, in turn, train Nigerian businesses. According to Pigon, it is not only to train the trainers; it would also like to interact with the universities and the educational sector in general. “We want the graduates to be prepared for business life” Pigon added.
