LSETF entrepreneurship programmes created 90,000 jobs in three years




Akintunde Oyebode


About 90,000 jobs have been created by the Lagos State Employment Trust Fund (LSETF) entrepreneurship programmes in three years, the Fund has revealed.LSETF revealed this at the presentation of its social impact assessment report of the entrepreneurship programmes in Lagos recently.
The Impact Assessment Exercise, which was carried out with support from the Ford Foundation, measured the achievements of the Fund’s interventions, documented the lessons learnt, and made recommendations on how to enhance the Fund’s performance in future.

The report titled, ‘LSETF impact: Progress and Lessons’, identified 89 per cent of businesses, which have been able to pay back loans solely from business income and profits; and 70 per cent of beneficiaries, who were unable to access funding before the LSETF intervention recorded positive improvement. About 89 per cent of small businesses, which benefited from the LSETF loans, were able to pay back from the business income and profits.

Also 72 per cent of the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), which benefited from the LSETF loans, reported a positive impact on their business growth and personal life; female beneficiaries were able to support an average of five dependents each, while their male counterparts support an average of four. This means that about 8,000 loan beneficiaries are responsible for at least 40,000 persons.

Besides, the LSETF’s interventions created a total of 89,678 jobs, while it enabled the inclusion of 41,515 taxpayers in the Lagos State Government tax net.Speaking on the report, the Executive Secretary, LSETF, Akintunde Oyebode, said the outcome has been very insightful and has thrown up indicators to areas that need improvement.

“At LSETF, we believe it is important to measure impact, to ensure we improve the benefit received from the public and private capital entrusted to us. By providing this body of work, we also hope that other institutions within and outside Nigeria, learn from our experience, and are able to design even better programmes to put people in jobs.

“I am very pleased that Ford Foundation partnered with us to carry out this independent assessment of the impact of the LSETF initiative and its operations,” he said.

In his remarks, Regional Director, Ford Foundation, Innocent Chukwuma, said it is impressive that the LSETF as an agency of Government has done a laudable job even in the face of growing scepticism of the impact of special programmes by the government to solve social problems.

Chukwuma said it is important that an agency created few years ago, embark on what is usually not the norm, to check how it has performed and the lessons learnt in order to make future plans. This should be a model for other states and government agencies across the federation, he urged.

Source:https://samueljackson12.blogspot.com/2019/03/lsetf-entrepreneurship-programmes.html

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