Federal Government has inaugurated a Steering Committee to drive the National Digital Invoicing and Financial Optimisation Strategy (NDIFS), targeting the cash-flow crisis that keeps small businesses starved of working capital despite having verified receivables owed to them.

Speaking at the inaugural meeting in Abuja yesterday, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr Jumoke Oduwole, said the central problem for many small and medium enterprises was cash conversion, warning that when cash was trapped in receivables, production slows, inventories tighten, suppliers weaken and export opportunities are lost.

Oduwole said the strategy must go beyond digitising compliance to actually transforming enterprise, cautioning that “if NDIFS ends with cleaner invoices but leaves productive businesses cash-starved, we will simply have digitised compliance without transforming enterprise.”

Oduwole outlined five priorities for the committee, including designing the system to support financing from the outset, ensuring interoperability with existing platforms, protecting data and cybersecurity, and testing the scheme through real transactions over a 90-day pilot involving selected exporters and value chains.

She said success would be measured by the value of verified receivables entering the system, the amount of financing unlocked, the number of SMEs and exporters reached, the cost and turnaround time of financing, and the resulting impact on inventory cycles and export performance.

The Committee, co-chaired by EnterpriseNGR Chairman, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, is hosted by the Nigeria Revenue Service, whose Executive Chairman, Dr Zacch Adedeji, attended the inauguration alongside other members drawn from revenue administration, financial regulation, insurance and the organised private sector.

Oduwole directed the Secretariat to anchor the Committee’s next meeting on a delivery dashboard that tracks milestones, owners, dates, dependencies, risks, and required decisions, insisting that if the economic outcome could not be measured, success could not be claimed.