The Nigerian Bureau of Statistics has released the 2017 National Micro Small and Medium Enterprise MSME Survey.
A Micro Enterprise is a business that employs between 1-9 people, a Small Enterprise employs between 10-49 people while a Medium Enterprise employs between 50-199 people.
In the survey Nigeria had 41.5 million MSMEs as at December 2017.
While 99.8% or 41.4 million were micro-enterprises, Small Enterprises accounted for 71,228 or 0.2% of all enterprises and medium enterprises accounted for 0.004% or 1793 enterprises.
Lagos State had the highest number of enterprises across all classes while Katsina State, Rivers State and Kaduna State were the only states that recorded significant increases in enterprise numbers.
Katsina state had a 36.4% increase, Rivers State 21.7% and Kaduna State 18.1%.
The survey showed that 91% of MSMEs in the country were concentrated in Wholesale/Retail Trade, Agriculture, Other Services, Manufacturing and Accommodation and Food Services.
Wholesale/Retail trade accounted for 42.3% of MSMEs, while Agriculture accounted for 20.9% of MSMEs the survey showed.
Out of the 97.1% of the MSMEs that took part in the survey were sole proprietorships, 2.2% were partnerships.
30.2% of entrepreneurs were within the 26-35 age bracket, 40.2% of entrepreneurs were within the 36-50 age bracket while 51.3% of MSMEs were owned by men.
Micro enterprises accounted for 86.3% or 59.6 million of the national workforce.
The survey also showed that 85% of businesses had initial start-up capital of N100,000.00 or less.
According to the survey, states with the largest number of SMEs were Lagos, Oyo and Osun States with Lagos having 8,395 or 11.5% of Small and Medium Enterprises in the country.
Oyo State was next with 6,131 or 8.4% of SMEs while Osun State took third place with 3,007 or 4.1% of SMEs.
According to the survey, Yobe, Bayelsa and Borno States had the lowest number of SMEs in the Country.
While Yobe State had 102 or 0.1% of SMEs, Bayelsa State had 300 or 0.4% of SMEs and Borno State had 538 or 0.7% of SMEs.
