Fate Foundation has faulted reforms of the Federal Government, noting that they have negatively impacted 90 per cent of businesses and entrepreneurs in the country.

The organisation, in its State of Entrepreneurship (SoE) in Nigeria Report for 2023, said the negative effects include high operating cost and loss of customers and lower profits, due to weak aggregate demand for goods and services.

These were some of the highlights of the document released at a press briefing to announce its Ninth Entrepreneurship Policy Dialogue Series that took place yesterday in Lagos.

The theme was: “The State of Entrepreneurship in Nigeria 2023: Policy Priorities for Nano, Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (NMSMEs)”.
Senior Research Fellow at The FATE Institute/Senior Economist, Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG), Wilson Erumebor, said in the last one year, entrepreneurs have been faced with high cost of doing business, occasioned by the naira, fuel scarcity, subsidy removal, exchange rate reforms, poor power supply, among other factors.

He observed that these policies impose a much more negative impact on smaller businesses than bigger ones, adding that entrepreneurs in the South-East were the most affected, while those in the South-South least suffered, relative to other regions.

Erumebor said indicators for the measurements include business performance, skills acquisition, innovation and technology adoption, perception of opportunities and enabling business environment

Also highlighting the report, Executive Director, FATE Foundation, Adenike Adeyemi, named the five best performing states in NMSMEs as Kano, Kogi, Kaduna, Borno and Bayelsa, while those with least scores consist of Yobe, Niger, Taraba, Osun and Zamfara.

She urged the government to implement policies and regulations that dismantle the bottlenecks in the way of businesses across sectors.