SEEKING to bridge the nation's unemployment gap, experts in the country have urged budding entrepreneurs to adapt to the rapidly changing trends in the business clime, notably the merger of business as a way to fast-track loan approvals.The suggestion came amid revelation that over 500,000 graduates join the labour market yearly, with majority of them facing the challenge of lack of capital to finance business ideas.Deputy Director, Development Finance, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Akintunde Sowunmi, who spoke at the graduation ceremony of 500 trainees under CBN's assisted Entrepreneurship Development Centre (EDC), in Lagos, bemoaned the increasing state of unemployment in the country, occasioned by the craze for white-collar jobs by fresh graduates.Sowunmi, while advising the entrepreneurs to be committed in honouring loan agreements implored them to form business partnerships through mergers of business proposal as a way to speed-up access to loans.According to him, the CBN will at various times carry out assessment of the performing loans through newly established credit registries and erring borrowers will be barred in future.He said for the nation to achieve its economic potentials there was need for entrepreneurial studies that would encourage the establishment of small-scale industrialists especially at this time that unemployment is at its peak and most graduates are left without jobs or skills in their hands to be gainfully employed.Deputy Governor of Lagos State, Adejoke Orelope-Adefulire and Commissioner of the Ministry of Women Affairs & Poverty Alleviation, stated that the one of the banes of the nation and the world today is unemployment even as the most effective way to guard against this is skill acquisition programme.Orelope-Adefulire represented by Mrs. Olufunke Odutola said, any society that fails to invest in its youths does so at its own peril.'It is to avert such an unpleasant situation that informed the massive investment of government limited resources in skill acquisition centres where our youths will acquire skills as well as relevant technical trainings that will empower them to become employers of labour.' She added.Executive Director, Africa Leadership Forum (ALF), Mr. Ayodele Aderinwale, entrepreneurship development programme in the same vain, stressed that financing was the main challenge the centre was facing as over the years, scores of young Nigerians and students of higher institutions from across the six geo-political zones are being provided the opportunity to acquaint themselves with first hand experience and exposure in modern business skills however access to loans is very limited.He added that ALF in addition to the training provided by the EDC has also introduced a number of value added services to assist the EDC graduates in actualising their vision of becoming successful entrepreneurs.
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