The Director-General of SMEDAN Alhaji Bature Umar Masari, signed the agreement on behalf of SMEDAN, while Ms P. O V Poncet the Director-General, BPI France, signed on behalf of BPI France under the watchful supervision of the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr. Olusegun Aganga and the French minister of Foreign Trade, Nicole Bricq in Abuja on Tuesday.
The collaboration is aimed at creating a working group to organize skills transfer from BPI France to SMEDAN, in a bid to share BPI France’s model and best practices learned from a long history of SME growth support.
Other benefits include BPI France’s intervention in the areas of financing innovation through state and regions budget allocations in the form of subsidies and repayable advances, loan guarantee scheme and equity guarantee scheme, co-financing alongside banks of long and medium- term bank loans to sustain the development of SMEs and medium sized firms as well as equity or quasi-equity investment directly and through partner funds, in SMEs and large firms and finance measures to support exporting firms.