The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria’s Furniture and wood Industrial Development Centre in Idu, Abuja will become fully operational by 2022.
The project scheduled for completion by the end of this year will accommodate about 525 Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises in the furniture industry and its value chain.
The Director General, SMEDAN, Dikko Radda who disclosed this at a facility tour with the Commerce and Industry Correspondents Association of Nigeria, CICAN said government is using the cluster as a pilot scheme to demonstrate its workability, adding that it would be done under Public Private Partnership thereafter.
Represented by the Deputy Director, Department of Engineering Technology and Infrastructure, Anthony Igba, the SMEDAN boss explained that there are 23 clusters across the country, on fast moving consumer goods, textiles, spices and leather among others established based on the comparative advantage of the states.
He also spoke on the one-stop-shop in the facility aimed at reducing burden on SMEs.
The African Development Bank in 2017 provided a grant of $600.000 for SMEDAN to conduct a viability study for the conversion of the IDCs across the country into cluster parks including the Abuja pilot scheme, sitting on 1.8 hectares of land.
