80% MSMEs optimistic about business opportunities - Survey

Despite the myriad of challenges confronting Nigerian entrepreneurs, about 80 percent of Nano, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (NMSMEs) say they are optimistic about business opportunities in the country.

A survey carried out on the State of Entrepreneurship (SoE) in Nigeria in 2022 by Fate Institute, gave an index score of 0.80 out of a possible 1.0 on the perception of opportunities for entrepreneurship.

The Institute is a research, policy and advocacy arm of Fate Foundation, the facilitator of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) MSME Community of Practice.

Speaking on the report, Executive Director, FATE Foundation, Adenike Adeyemi, stated: “The SoE survey covered 8,611 businesses across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in Nigeria.

“The report tracks key indicators of entrepreneurship along five pillars – business performance, skills acquisition, innovation and technology adoption, perception of opportunities and enabling business environment.

“Despite the challenging business environment, the majority of entrepreneurs are optimistic about the future.

“In 2022, Nigeria had an entrepreneurial index score of 0.58 out of 1.0, implying a slightly better than average performance on entrepreneurship development in Nigeria. Across the five pillars, the best performing was perception of opportunities with an index score of 0.80 out of 1.0. This indicates that 80 percent of entrepreneurs are optimistic about business opportunities in Nigeria.

“The result depicts that most entrepreneurs are highly optimistic about the future of their businesses and are most likely to expand their businesses in the coming year despite the harsh business environment,” she added.