CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCITION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The contribution of small –scale business in fostering economic growth and development has been well articulated in different areas of this study .the specific attention on them based on their expected impact and potential contribution on broad and diversified production base, as well as their accelerative effect in achieving macro objectives pertaining to full employment, income distribution and the development of local technology. They are particularly most conducive for diffusion of management skills and emulation of indigenous entrepreneurship overtime.
Small business provides financial opportunity and a chance to develop wealth. It is a place where creative, motivated individuals can use their talents and expertise to the fullest, because it provides satisfying careers and job opportunities and it’s also the back bone of the market economy of the word. Every big business starts as a small business, and it started with an entrepreneur (small business), who at first, earns little or no profit. It was the new ideas of small business that brought about Ekene Dili Chukwu Transport, the FAN Milk, Nnewi “Tokumbo” parts, and even the many commercial banks in Nigeria. Untried ideas become annulations that become concepts that changed the business world. And so it goes. Small business is the basis for the economic well being many developed nations including USA/Japan.
Entrepreneurship is what makes a small business successful. Entrepreneurship occurs when an individual develops a new venture, a new approach to an old business or idea, or a unique way of giving the market place a product or service by using resources in a new way under conditions of risk. Small business triumphs and entrepreneurship are closely related to it. It is difficult to separate them.
The unemployment situation in the country coupled with the new government instinctive towards easing social tensions among unemployed youths, through the programmed of the National Directorate of Employment (NDE), were intended to lure a lot of unemployed Nigerians, including graduates into self determination through self employment. Graduates and school leavers are now realizing that government and the established private companies are not ready to come to their aid directly, through paid employment due to the dividing state of the economy. Short of the alternatives, Nigerians including our graduates are therefore launching themselves into various small-scale business ventures, such as cottage soap and cosmetics production, fairing, restaurants, fast food, publishing, writing, block making, garri processing, food processing, refuse disposal, taxi driving, cleaning services, weaving, baking tailoring, advertising and other same business venture which depends mostly on local raw materials. The determination to succeed is also fast becoming the order of the day.
Government has been playing appreciative role in promoting the survival and growth of small-scale enterprise in recognition of them flexible and adaptive nature as well as their re-generative power in promoting economic growth and development. Government also encourages people to establish their own small
business so as to reduce the problem of unemployment in the country and also reduce the problem of importation of goods, more so, to produce exportation products.
Government in believing that a dynamic and growing small manufacturing sub-sector can contribute significantly to the implementation of a wide range development effectives, has thus enunciated various policies to encourage their proliferation and make them veritable engines of growth and development. In the third and for the development plans and the on-going three years rolling plan, priority has been accorded industrialization with greater emphasis on small-scale enterprises. The basic activities of government policies as maintained in the monetary and fiscal policy measures, are to improve the financing and other supportive services of small-scale business by expanding and improving access to credit and infrastructural facilities, reducing their production costs, boosting their profitability, enhancing their survival and growth capacities as well as expanding their contributions to non-oil exports by making their products competitive in the export markets.
Hardly could any major industry succeed without the services of small-business enterprise. The major goals of any profit oriented business are to make profit. A company will make more profit if statistics its customers need better them the competitors. Therefore in the contribution of small-scale business, bakeries would produce what the customers want and by so doing they maximize profit and only bakeries that are effective and efficient can satisfy customer’s needs. In reality, it is possible to run a business without profit for a time, but it is not possible for to survive for one day without customers. Customers are the
central theme of any business. Without a total commitment to them, contribution to economic growth and development will have limited and brief effects.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Bakery is in the production industry the quality of products rendered by our Bakeries have been attracting criticisms from people in all works of life. The civil servants, business men and the general public are all very critical of production of cookies like bread, chi-chin, cake, meat pie, boons etc. The complaints ranges from those of poor quality of products, poor packages, high prices, poor delivery, shortage of skilled manpower which affects productivity and restrain expansive the use of potassium bromated which National Agency for food and Drug Administration Commission (NAFDAC) banned for health purpose.
Most bakeries do not put their customers in the prime place as they supposed to be. There is now keen competition and to compete means to contribute to economic growth and development. Dickson (1971:4), agreed with this view when he said that small scale enterprises are ploughed by inadequacies and serious miss-uses of business records and business information. The problem of poor or wrong location of an industry affects its production. Such as nearness to raw materials, market, sources of power and access to supply of labour and transport facilities etc.
Government incentive in industries has previously directed to public investment neglecting private initiative. But a diversified and self-sufficient economy must take into consideration the importance of private sector in capital formation.
Based on the fact that one cannot build a house on a platter of gold without encountering one or two hassles here and there, so in the genesis and revelation of this work as the researcher encountered several problems the course of writing, which ranges from lack of time, financial and material constraints to the inability of reaching all members of the sample due to transport problems and even those reached tend not to render full co-operation thus the total number of people interviewed became smaller.
Other limitations which the researcher encountered in the course of writing are that some of questionnaires distributed to the respondents were not returned despite one or two reminders sent to them, while those that were delivered by hand were non-challantly filled. As such, there have been criticisms about the bakery industries in the way they render services to their customers. i.e. They do not see the customers as king lot in terms of national output and employment. Moreover, Nigeria has various policies on small-scale enterprises in recent National development plan and also in the structural Adjustment programmed (SAP). The researcher wants to carry out a research on what bakeries do and the role they play in economic growth and development the researcher also wants to have an idea base either to support all the sources about the poor impression people have on how to improve their production so as to contribute effectively in national economic growth and development.
Bakeries can do more individualized jobs for customers and thereby attract them on the basis of specialty product quality and personal services rather than on the impersonal of price or mass production of largely identical business. Based on
the above, the need for studying this topic is to show the effectiveness of small-scale business in national economic growth and development.
1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
The importance of small scale business in the promotion of economic growth and development has always been at the forefront of development strategies. However, many developing countries have failed to adopt this strategy owing to their belief that it is a relatively show process of industrialization which may not be very compatible with their desire to “catch up” with the industrial countries. This along with the relative availability of foreign exchange (particularly through foreign grants and export of basic commodities) in the early days of independence has encourage many of those countries to follow a different mode of industrialization for transition from a largely gravis ion society to a modern industrial sector including Nigeria, adopted import substitution strategy of industrialization aimed mainly at producing domestically consumer goods that were erstwhile imported. This strategy of industrialization often requires continuous dependence on major supplier’s over-seas for the provision raw materials and spare parts needed for uninterrupted production in these industries.
Therefore, the aim of this study is to know:
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