The South East Business and Investment Summit (SEBIS) says it will set up a 1 billion dollar investment fund to support the growth and development of Small and Medium Enterprises(SMEs) in the South-East.

The Executive Secretary of SEBIS, Dr Ifedi Okwenna, disclosed this on Wednesday in Abuja.

Okwenna spoke when the Lead Private Sector Partner of Enyimba Economic City (EEC), Mr Darl Uzu, visited the management of the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency ofNigeria(SMEDAN).

SEBIS, a public private sector initiative, is sponsored by EEC.

The upcoming summit, powered by EEC and scheduled to hold from Dec. 11 to Dec. 13 in Enugu, is designed to match SMEs in Nigeria together with its counterpart in India and other parts of the globe.

The SEBIS is pioneered by Continental Export Development Nigeria (CEDEN) in partnership with the Infrastructure Bank of Nigeria.

It has collaboration with several Diaspora groups and clusters of investment communities in Europe and America.

SEBIS also partners South-East Chambers of Commerce and other bilateral and multilateral chambers of commerce.

“We are getting investors; business people coming together to rebuild South-East; we are setting up a 1 billion dollar investments over the next five years to support SMES growth in the south east region.

“That is why we are partnering with both government and public organisation across the globe to pull this fund to support SMES.”

He said the greatest challenge of SMES was structuring of their businesses; hence, the need for EEC, via the summit, to evolve measures to support the SMEs.

“Some of them cannot build financial plan; some cannot even register their business; they are not bankable; so, we are looking at supporting them,’’ Okwenna said.

Uzu, in his remarks, said EEC was ready for a major economic summit in Enugu.

He said EEC, with the summit, wanted to build a strategic partnership and create a programme that would attract SMES from other parts of the world, South-East and Nigeria in general.

“For example, we have more than 100 companies that are coming from India; we will provide support for them to develop their SMES.

“There are things we can do here to develop the SMES; we are going to provide training industry on the skills required; we will be doing this very important summit so as to evolve ways to garvanise the SMES,” he said.

On his part, the Managing Director of SMEDAN, Mr Charles Odii, said SMEDAN was also doing similar activities as the EEC in term SMEs growth.

“We have a fashion and textile hub; we have a wood work factory here; we have packaging factory here; we have recycling factory here.

“We agreed that we need to replicate what we have here across the country,’’ he said.

He said one of the problems of small business was lack of electricity and finance and most importantly, skilled personnel to get the work done.

Odii said SMEDAN would have a matching programme in terms of funding, saying that the agency would deploy entrepreneurs from each state in the South-East; no fewer than 25 to the summit–to showcase their products.

The SMEDAN director general will present a paper at the summit on “Organised SMEs as a Bedrock of Increased Investment, Economic Stimulation and Growth.’(Vanguard)