Introduction
1.1 Background To The Study
The contribution of small –scale business in fostering economic growth and development has been well articulated in different areas of the study. The specific attention on them based on their expected impact and potential contribution on broad and diversified production, 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.
The meaning of Small business provides varies from one country to anther and from one industry to another even within the same industry. In Nigeria for instance, the development plan 2003-2007 (Vol. 1. 353) described a small scale business as any manufacturing establishment employing less them ten people or whose investment is equipment and machinery do not exceed N 600 . According to the credit guiding of the central Nigerian (CBN), small scale business are classified as those business within an annual turnover of less than half a million.
The Nigeria Bank for commerce and industrial (NBC1) 2003-2007 defined small scale business as an industry with capital not exceed N 750, 00 including working capital but including working capital but excluding cost of land.
In Enugu state fund for small scale industry (EUSSI) established by the state government defined small industry with a capital investment of N150,000 in machinery and equipment alone this exclude working capital and cost of land.
Small scale business provides financial opportunity and a chance to develop wealth. It is a place where creative motivated individuals can use their talent and expertise to the fullest becomes it provides satisfying careers and job opportunities and it is also the back borne of the market economy of the world.
Every big business started as a small business and it started with an entrepreneur 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 Tokubo parts and even the many commercial Banks in Nigeria. Untried ideas become annulations that become concepts that change the business world. Small business is the basis for the economic well being of many development nations including USA and 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 (NDE) were intended to lure a lot of unemployment. Graduates and school leaver are now realized that government and the established private companies are not ready to come to their air 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, cleaning services, weaving, advertising and other same 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 encourage 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, moreso, 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 emaciated various policies to encourage their proliferation and make them veritable engines of growth and development. In the third and for the development plan 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 is to make profit. A company will make more profit if statistics it’s customers need better them the competitors.
There fore 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 customers 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. In this study, Ify Bakery which is the case study of this topic is not an exception to the problems farced by bakeries in Enugu.
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