 I bring you very warm greetings from the President, President Mohamed Buhari, who as you know is particularly proud of the impact and contributions of MSMEs in our economy. And I'm particularly delighted to have the opportunity to see some of our young and innovative entrepreneurs here in the hall today. Since its inauguration in 2018, the National MSME Awards has grown in lifts and bounds. And it has become a prominent feature in the annual events calendar of the MSME community in Nigeria, attracting thousands of prospective business owners, established entrepreneurs, regulators and financiers. In the first edition of the awards in 2018, we had only 500 applications. And I'm told that over 10,000 entries were received for this year's edition alone. Clearly, clearly the interest shown in the awards by Nigerian entrepreneurs has been tremendous in the past years. The winners in the different categories have gone home with various prizes in past years. And these prizes have generally impacted their businesses and profiles. So we had cash prizes, cars, and of course local and international media attention. The awards have also inspired many young entrepreneurs to greatness. And some of the stories are simply incredible. This year also we have a selection of outstanding winners. MSME of the year, Bold Art History is a company with a team of young and creative artists working on improving the arts industry by introducing polystyrene to their works. With this, they have created impressive artworks and are providing jobs for many budding artists. We've also seen Oski integrated. This has created a niche in the business of catfish farming. The founders are adding value to fish farming through the processing for local and export, for local and export markets. We've also seen so many other winners, Vegas Gold and the Footwear Academy and all, you know, and all of these various winners going right across different industries. And all of them have something unique about them. All of them basically use local products, employ a good number of Nigerian young men and women, and all of them have worked very hard to develop their businesses. But today is not just about them, of course they are the winners. But it's also about the so many who obviously couldn't make even the top three, but are nevertheless very ingenious, very great businesses in their own right and doing awesome things. And so we really must celebrate all of them, the nominees and those who are not even nominated, because as I said, just entries alone we had over 10,000. So there is, you can see that there are so many Nigerian businesses that are doing incredible things, and every year will make the attempt to continue to recognize and celebrate them. We have decided to make this annual celebration of excellence and innovation in the MSME sector a week-long event. The idea of course is to draw more attention to the challenges and prospects in the MSME sector. As you may be aware, all of the finalists typically, they get a price package which includes two weeks of media attention to showcase and market their products. And I'm glad to note that this year will be even bigger when compared to the limitations experienced during the 2020 edition due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But let me take a very quick moment to talk about some of government support for the MSME sector. In the aftermath of the pandemic, we designed the Economic Sustainability Plan and the president asked me to chair the Economic Sustainability Committee. The whole idea was to save jobs and create new opportunities. And one of the important interventions was the MSME Survival Fund. The MSME Survival Fund was a creation of the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment. And the Minister of State who is here today was the anchor of that very important program. The program comprised a payroll support scheme for qualifying businesses, a guaranteed off-take scheme, and a grant scheme for artisans and transporters, and free business name registration. All of these were meant to be incentives to support the sector. Under the payroll support component of the plan, so far 459,307 employees have been successfully paid between 30 and 50,000 over a period of three months. The target beneficiaries of this scheme usually would include private schools, teachers and administrators in private schools, hotel staff, road transport workers, the creative industry, and various others. With a very painstaking and rigorous verification process. There was also a track created for artisans and transporters known as the Artisan and Transport Grant. This was targeted at 330,000 beneficiaries. To date, 265,425 beneficiaries have actually successfully benefited from that scheme. Now for the general MSME grant, out of about 100,000 targeted beneficiaries, over 44,000 beneficiaries have been paid across the 36 states of the Federation and the FCT. The guaranteed off-take scheme which targets another 100,000 businesses and is currently being implemented. The focus is on MSMEs that manufacture local products. What government does is to guarantee the purchase from them of the qualifying products. So we ask them to make face masks, hand sanitizers, PPEs for essential medical workers, and these products are paid for by government. We just ask them to produce and we pay. That's why it's called a guaranteed off-take scheme. And then the products are distributed to Nigerian institutions and entities that will require them. In addition, we have what we call a formalization support scheme. This was an initiative to support the registration of 250,000 businesses across the country free of charge. So what we did was to offer 250,000 businesses free CAC registration, corporate affairs registration, so that they can become formalized and become formal corporate entities. Of that number, 229,532 new businesses have now been registered. So in total, close to a million beneficiaries have so far received one form of support or the other under the survival fund scheme. And I really would like to congratulate the Ministry of Industry, Trade, and Investment, not just for the creativity of the type of awards, of the type of schemes and programs, but also for the very efficient handling of the whole scheme and ensuring that beneficiaries are paid and that they are paid promptly. In addition, we have a 200 billion Nira fund, which was made available to MSMEs in priority sectors, such as healthcare, agro-processing, creative industries, local and gas aviation. This is granted through a scheme jointly run by the Bank of Industry and Nexing, especially for export expansion. The central bank has also created a 100 billion target credit facility for MSMEs. We've also paid some attention to ease of doing business initiatives. We've consolidated on the previous efforts and actions, and in the wake of the pandemic last year, NAFDAQ launched a palliative scheme for MSMEs. The main objective was to reduce product registration fees by 80 percent for a six-month period and also provide an e-registration option in keeping with our desire to promote COVID-19 compliant behavior. We've also launched two production facilities under a shared facility initiative. In Benway State, we launched the 200,000 Capacity Yarm Storage Facility for small holder farmers in Zakibiam Yarm Market, and the other in Lagos State, a modern fashion hub in Ikeja. The facility for a Nambra State, which is a state-of-the-art leather works facility at Obunike Leather Cluster, has been completed and is ready for commissioning. Other shared facility projects are ready, and some of them will be commissioning soon. They include the Carduna State Tomato Taste Production Line, a cap and trick cluster in Edo State, and then there are others in Katsina, in Kirby, in Eboi, and Ogun State, and Kano State. These will be ready before the end of the year. So let me once again congratulate all our finalists and winning MSMEs across the country. And to those who didn't make it this year, don't give up, keep innovating, keep working hard. Your recognition and rewards are inevitable. Permit me also to thank all the governors who hosted MSME clinics in their states in the past year. Those who supported the building of one-stop shops for MSMEs and all of those who provided suitable buildings for shared facilities for MSMEs. The collaboration of all of the states is absolutely important in ensuring that we're able to deliver on all of the promises of the MSME clinics. I must also thank our partner ministries and departments and agencies for your immense support and Access Bank PLC, which has always been a dependable partner for all our MSME clinics and related programs. We must also commend the team responsible for putting together these amazing week of activities culminating in this award ceremony. We're greatly encouraged by the innovation of young Nigerians and your resilience where on the right path. And I very strongly believe that what we're seeing today once our business environment gets better and we improve our business environment, improve access to credit for many of our young businesses, unleash this waiting talent and creativity, our country will certainly never be the same. So I'll leave you with President Mohammad Ibrahim's words of commitment to MSMEs in Nigeria. And he said, I quote, I will support you and create opportunities for you to grow and prosper. This is our commitment to small businesses in Nigeria. End of quote. Thank you all very much for listening and thank you for being a part of this. Thank you.