Skye Bank, empowers Entrepreneurs, SMEs on growth & Development

As part of its efforts to support and promote the growth of the small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) as the growth engine of the Nigerian economy, Skye Bank Plc has organized a capacity building seminar for entrepreneurs and other small scale business owners to help them succeed in their businesses.

The maiden Skye SMEs seminar with the theme “It is Possible”, had in attendance many operators in the SMEs sector who came to gain fresh and new insights and trends into the operations, financing and management of SMEs.

Declaring the seminar open, the bank’s Executive Director, Corporate and Investment Banking, Mr. Timothy Oguntayo, who stood in for the Group Managing Director/CEO, Mr. Kehinde Durosinmmi-Etti, explained that the bank organized the seminar as part of its contributions to the development of SMEs in the country.

Oguntayo said the SMEs sector was an important sector as it provides more opportunities and employment than the mining, oil and gas sectors. Indeed, the sector can increase economic opportunities for those who have not been able to participate directly in large-scale projects.

“Without doubt, the SMEs sector has the capacity to drive and encourage indigenous business and rural economic development such that the whole country can be transformed to create productive economic activity for the people through which they earn their living and contribute to national development”, he said.

Noting that over 32 million Nigerians were involved the sector, the bank director said if the sector was properly developed; it has the capacity to solve the unemployment problem in the country. 

Oguntayo promised that Skye Bank would continue to play the role of a facilitator and development partner to help young businesses grow and realize their full potentials to the benefit of the nation, the people and the economy.

On her part, the General Manager, Retail Banking, Skye Bank, Mrs. Arinola Kola-Daisi, said SMEs constitute an important vehicle for national development as they have the capacity to integrate a large segment of the populace in productive economic activities.

Specifically, she said the economies of the Asian Tigers or Asian Dragons of the highly free and developed Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan, owe their rise to economic pre-eminence to an extent, to the existence of well-organized and efficiently run SMEs.

Similarly, she noted that the  Tiger Club Economies of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand, follow the same export-driven model of economic development pursued by the four dominant Asian Tigers where SMEs constitute a sizeable vehicle of bringing about development and have remained so till this day.