By Femi Atolagbe
|
In a bid to fortify and empower Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), in Ondo State, the State Bureau of Public Procurement (ODBPP) in conjunction with World Bank have trained over 160 participants on a new procurement guidelines.
Director General of the Agency, Mr Tolu Fadahunsi declared at a four-day training held in Akure the state capital which began from September 23.
He said the training was to educate participants to participate in the new window of opportunities government is creating.
Fadahunsi said pandemic has created huge economic disruption and virtually every organisation was badly hit by the problem, hence the need to help the SMEs sustain themselves as a group.
He noted that World Bank’s Study has shown that SMEs are the mostly affected by the outbreak of Coronavirus because of their fragile nature, but multinational and big corporate organisations can sustain the the shock created by the pandemic and apply stages realignment. SMEs do not have such internal risk averse mechanism.
He added that to cushion this, the current administration would roll out new COVID -19 guidelines that will enable them become competitive in public procurement.
He assured the participants that Ondo State Government will not renege on its promise to make them a beneficial of the government contracts.
“We posed to give the SMEs the opportunity to become partaker in the common wealth of the state and there is no going back on this,” he assured.
He therefore, advised them to ensure they make use of the new skills and the new guidelines acquired in the training, so that the new tendering process along with the guidelines will not be strange to them.
Some of the participants thanked the state government and the World Bank for the opportunity given on them to be part of what they described as an eye opener.
