₦airaland Forum

Please I think the fight is enough already! Let's keep this house nice and quiet as ever!

@globaldream! Did you get any Milestone attached to your appendix? If so what were they. For me and others that signed on the day we did, we did not get any milestone on our appendix as it was blank.

@chukwuka12, there are people who start poultry with 2M total Capital.

If someone get 2M as first tranche it is more than enough for him to start a farm that can roll in some cashflow while he waits for second tranche to expand the business.

The person can start for instance with Broilers that have a maturity period of 8 weeks Max and learn some valuable lessons from the experience and when second tranche come he can expand the business and incorporate layers!

The first tranche should be for you to test the waters and improve your business and management skills before the second one comes.

All man to himself anyway! Lack of Money is not the cause of business failures in 70% of the cases but poor management and lack of skills/ experience.

Also let me add that there is nothing that kills a business as fast as lack of cash flow. If your business is not making money from day one! The business will never survive. That is why it is imperative that Awardees must make sure they use their tranche 1 wisely and make sure the business start making cash flow from thence. Even if the business is not making profits it must atleast make cashflow that covers HOUR and running cost.

Be wise, Tranche 2 will not come easy! You can see how long it is already taking to get tranche 1. Tranche 3 should not even be in your picture as that one is what I call Compensation package. Your business should be able to stand with tranche 1 and 2, tranche 3 if it comes will just be a bonus.

In addition to what @ denn has said. You don't need the fashionable store and brands for now. I would suggest you significantly scale down your start up cost and rather use the bulk of the tranche to invest in Products which you can sale and keep generating cashflow.

You can invest in fashionable branded store when the 2nd tranche show up in your account. I will advise you to start thinking hard of what to do before the money come ooh because when the money come and you have no plan on ground, it will vanish like magic!

Scale down significantly! If I were you, invest 1.4m in products and 200k in shop space! Use the revenue (profit) generated from the business to pay yourself and your workers not your capital (Youwin Money).

Thank you.

The Youwin Program is a Non-Partisan program. Every part of Nigeria has always being incorporated into the program. There have Youwin awardees from PDP, APC and Labour Party states.

The program is merit based irrespective of tribe, religion and ethnicity. I am an awardee, originally from the south but I won the award to implement my business in the north and I have seen northerners and westerners who have won to implement their business in parts of country they are not from.

As far as I am concern, Youwin is a government program and it is a continum, irrespective who win the election in february, Youwin is expected to continue.

I remember a saying that the Problem of Africa and Nigeria is that it leaders tend to think in four year cycle! Let's us start planning for the Ten years and 20 years vision.

I repeat Youwin Awardee are the future of Nigeria private sector and we must show the way forward.

I am interested in engaging in debates over mundane things. The fact that the Nigerian Economy is still being factored over the price of crude oil is a disgrace.

What is happening now is a lesson for our generation. Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar have all steered there economy away from oil and don't even care if oil falls to $20 a barrel. That's what we should have done years ago, rather our leader choose to play to the gallery with our collective resource ( running an expensive government, corruption, nepotism, mediocrity).

We have a duty as young people to do the needful. It start from you and I, let's stop apportioning blames and work hard for ourselves.

@okoji, I am even right and he is wrong! Use google and do the search and confirm.

This is the most authentic site for crude futures!

www.bloomberg.com/energy/

Nigerian crude is the Bonny Light Sweet a version of the Brent crude classification and it is always more expensive that the WTI crude.

Check it out.

Mr. Stagger! Light sweet crude is BRENT crude (please make google your friend). Nigeria crude is the Bonny Light sweet a version of Brent crude. The Nigerian crude is cheaper to refine and has low sulphur contents compared to other crudes (saudi arabia, qatar, UAE). Bonny Light (Brent) is also more expensive than other crude classifications, however it is mostly western refiners that have there refinery set up to process Bonny Light unlike indian,china and asian refiners that prefer to refine the cheaper crudes and have their machines set up for those.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonny_Light_oil

For latest price on crude futures, please use this site.

Brent currently trading @ $70/P Barrel.

www.bloomberg.com/energy/

Yes @ stagger, however Nigerian Crude is the Brent crude and it is trading at $69/pb which is well below the 2014 and 2015 budget benchmarks.

The only thing I want to assure Youwin Awardees is that no matter what happens the Government plans to keep the Youwin Program going. NOI spoke explicitly last week at the Capital market summit that the Program will continue despite the difficulties and even said the president launched the 4th edition and the SME growth fund as a demonstration of his Goodwill towards the program. The government plans to introduce austerity measures but the Youwin Program will not be affected as those are the social safety nets the government plans to use to spur the economy.

In the interim, people should not resign their jobs until they actually see the Youwin funds in their accounts! Though I believe a lot of people are passionate about their business and are throwing in all they have which is good.

Finally the Naira is now trading at N182.55 to the dollars at the interbank market today, it means definitely that the CBN will further devalue the currency if the trend continues. My take is that the naira should be out rightly devalued to N200 to avoid all the speculations and save our scarce foreign reserves.

Just to add to what stagger has said! Youwin Grants tranche disbursements are not sure things in respect of timeline! I will urge all awardees to judiciously use their first tranche and make sure they atleast start generating revenues from it because if not so, you are in for a very deep poo!.

Cheers

@hmbs, the last day of response was same as others surveys (thursday 27th November). So I believe everyone must have done his or her survey already.

However, I am very sure that this is not in anyway delaying the tranche payments as apart from 2 states in the north east that have serious security challenge, every other state is relatively peaceful and business can go on.

I don't think youwin 3 awardees from the north east is the issue, apart from Borno and some parts of Yobe! Every awardee can do his business from his location originally.

We did see th survey and it was submitted last thursday. Let's see what happens anyway!

I have been in commodity business for many year @ OP and I can assure you that sesame seed is not one of those commodity you can easily come on nairaland and look for its supplier. The chain is very coded to source sesame seed and it has lots of challenges! Not many people have the structure on ground to manage its logistics and challenges. Sesame seed is aa very very expensive commodity and one needs more than 5 miillion Naira to source upto (30 tons) truck load. So I will advise you to either go source it yourself or look for credible seasoned companies to do business with on nairaland.

Anybody that accept the terms you are proposing is un serious and wasting your time.

Cheers:
NB: I don't do sesame seeds because of it many challenges and I won't advise anyone to do it unless you have deep pockets to challenge Olam and Co!.

Hello People!

I also suggest we take it patiently and just tarry on! Everyone has been affected by the delay. We are optimistic the Youwin secretariate will do the needful very soon.

Meanwhile we all should use this opportunity, review our plans and make necessary adjustments.

We should also have it in mind that the government is also facing its own challenges with monies too and are struggling to steady the economy.

Oil prices have just plummeted to $68/barrel today with further slides expected. The economy has now fallen below current government budget benchmarks and well below next year forecast.

Let's keep this in mind and rework our plans and remove all unnecessary expense and luxury we already have planned. Let's work on shoe string budgets and use our first tranche to achieve as much milestones as possible.

Cheers

The Central Bank of Nigeria has explained further reasons for the Monetary Policy Committee’s devaluation of the naira and raising of key rates.

The MPC had, at its 98th meeting in Abuja on Tuesday, devalued the naira from N155 to N168 against the dollar, increased Monetary Policy Rate from 12 to 13 per cent, and also increased the private sector Cash Reserve Ratio from 15 to 20 per cent, among other policy decisions.

The CBN said the policy decisions were meant to save the economy from a precarious situation of a sliding naira and excess banking sector liquidity.

The Deputy Governor, Corporate Services, Mr. Bayo Adelabu, made these known when members of the House of Representatives Committee on Banking and Currency visited its Lagos office on Wednesday.

He said, “The decision of the MPC was the best we could do under the circumstance the economy is presently. We noticed that a lot of things contributed to the pressure on the naira. Firstly is the declining revenue from oil.

“Our source of revenue in this country is just oil and when oil price declined by about 25 per cent in the last one month, we expected that there would be pressure on the foreign reserves. We believe that the pressure on the naira, apart from the declining oil prices, is also as a result of the liquidity in the banking industry whereby a lot of frivolous demands are being made by customers.”

“The only thing to do to stop bank from granting loans to these customers is to mop up more of the monies available to the banks. That was why we increased the CRR on private sector deposits. We believe it will reduce the pressure on the foreign reserves.”

The CBN deputy governor noted that instead of lending to the productive sectors of the economy, banks were busy advancing loans to mainly importers of consumable items.

“What the CBN is saying is that we need to become more patriotic. We should patronise locally-made goods and services. We do not need to be importing everything. This is part of the reasons for the pressure on the naira,” Adelabu said.

“Why should we be importing fruits, eggs and tooth picks?” he asked.

The deputy governor noted that in any developing economy, the central bank had a mandate to develop any sector that contributes to economic growth and development.

He said the CBN would never allow any activity to distract it from its core mandate, adding that “our focus is on stability as have been in various decisions taken at our Monetary Policy Committee meetings, where all these things are always discussed at length before we arrive at what is best for the economy.

“In terms of financial stability, this is a mandate that the central bank cannot joke with.”

The Chairman of the House committee, Mr. Jones Onyeriri, said the CBN needed to look at the impact of its policies on the downtrodden as the National Assembly was usually concerned about the welfare of the citizenry.

“I know that the core mandate of any monetary authority is to ensure that there is credit accessibility to the people, especially in Nigeria where you have a middle class that is almost extinct. It is our duty to recreate the middle class.

“So, I think for the CBN, because we are in trying times, I think you should have more concentration on recreating the middle class instead of paying our attention to things that might not have a direct relationship with your core mandate.

Source: www.punchng.com/business/money/why-cash-reserve-ratio-was-raised-cbn/

@ op, please provide your contact details for ease of communication.

Thanks

@denn, I agree with your point on how depreciation has affected your personal economy but that's because you choose to import! Depreciation is supposed to discourage imports and curb luxury lifestyle as price of imported commodities will rise beyond the reach of some people.

This will encourage people to buy local and engage in production locally and it will also spur exports as most commodity made locally will become competitive abroad.

My personal take as ever is that the CBN should allow the currency to depreciate further to 200- 220 naira/ dollars. Then people will start making mopping sticks in Nigeria rather than import them! The clothes made in Aba will become competitive and can even be exported for foreign currency. People will prefer to wear ankara made in Ibadan and keep lots of folks employed rather than suits made in Turkey!.

If you @ denn, you can choose to get a local subsidize for the equipments you wants to imports, Go to FIIRO, oshodi with a prototype design of what you want to import and believe they will make it at half the price. To grow at home we must think local and export abroad!. My take sha.

For those who think Youwin Grant is "Settlement", I pity them because they are deluded. Youwin Grant should be the beginning of our business growth and success not the ceiling! Youwin awardees who got 10M should be running a 60M to 100M business in 3 years to 5 years. Likewise others who got lower grant ceilings! We should be looking to triple and quadruple our grants awards.

Another perspective I want to touch on is that your grant award is still intacts and of same value as the day you got it irrespective of the currency depreciation. There is a difference between currency depreciation and inflation. It is only inflation that will affect your money purchasing power not currency depreciation, though currency fluctuation do have economic effects. The last time I checked from the national bureau of statistics, inflation have not increased but still remain at 7 to 9%. So let's pray inflations does not jump to double digit in the coming year.

The Biggest issue facing us is the massive import dependence of our economy. Too many things are being imported which could be easily made in our country. Our people now prefer imported items rather than made in Naija and one clown was even proud to tell me the other day that he does not use "made in Naija " stuffs. I just looked at him and laughed! The same person came to complain that aboki was not selling dollars at 184/$1.

When you get to the market you see several rubbish being off loaded from china/asia arrival containers including Mopping sticks! I was ashamed that someone was importing Mopping sticks from China.
We the Youwin awardees can make a difference in our businesses by Buying made in Nigeria equipments, components and machines for our businesses where possible. Even some machines can be easily fabricated at FIIRO oshodi and they can compete with foreign ones too.

Let us incorporate the buying of "made in Naija" that is the only hope and future for us.

According to Youwin 1 and 2 awardees, tranche 1 is usually paid before monitors and mentors start work.

My take is there is absolutely no reason why monitors or mentors should make contacts with awardees without paying them tranche 1. On what basis are the monitoring or mentoring? What reports are they sending? For what? I am optimistic that Youwin will disburse before any mentoring or monitoring starts, as that is the trend.

Oga! You should realize that anyone with 250 million Naira can set up a big industrial farm anywhere in Nigeria without buying a Land as most state government and Local government can give the land for free.

Please advise the owner properly! If you want to lease the land, drop your phone numbers so that I can contact you.

Thanks

Yes! Those with issues regarding address should simply fill out the registered business address of the business or your home address. I repeat there is nothing unlawful about using your home address as your business address.

With time all of you will have a business address and the mentor will be free to visit your business address. Meanwhile do the needful now.

Cheers
NB: all youwin 4 applicants should please go to their thread! We will come over and help them there. Posting on this thread might help you but might not help others.

@hmbs have they given you your account details? I.e Account name and Account number. If they have given you details then its their business what they do with the documents.

However I think it was wrong for Access Bank to Generate account numbers elsewhere and ask people to submit documents elsewhere as it causes unnecessary delay, I was skeptical of this arrangements from the beginning . This is what happens when some greedy fellow try to corner all the accounts in order to meet target.

Diamond Bank, GTB, Zenith and Co simply asked us to go to the nearest branch and open the accounts with the supporting documents. And even Stanbic IBTC dispatched staffs to meet awardees and collect the documents and help with account opening.

I pray this is not part of what is delaying the whole process. I will suggest that awardees who have not received account details from Access Bank should inundate them with calls like 5 times a day until they act.

I have received my Zenith Account details, Cheque book, ATM, Internet Banking details etc, just waiting for alert now..LOL and Azonto will start! Lol

Even me I heard "shortly". Almost all the News Media carried the news and said NOI said disbursement will start shortly. Let's pray they disburse "shortly". But Nobody Knows when "shortly" is, it could be next Month, Next year, or next week or Tomorrow.

Lol!

Please anyone with information on when Youwin might start paying 1st Tranche for awardees?. The lack of communication from Youwin and the wait is becoming too much ooh!!

Yes its true people! Don't be in a hurry to submit yet. I suggest you take it easy, go over the questions off line! Do the work and consider if the answers you are providing are the best.

I was one of the Youwin 3 awardees and I will be happy to help anyone who have issues with his work or need assistance proof reading his work.

Oga! Please state your asking price here and for how long will the land be on lease?

Please state the lease price and the sales price. Is the land Government Land with C of O or R of O.

I would rather suggest that people who are Youwin 4 applicants should open a new thread to synergise together and work issues affecting them out.

Jaiyeola Andrews and James Emejo in Abuja
President Goodluck Jonathan monday inaugurated a $50 million private equity fund for the expansion of business opportunities by the small and medium enterprises in order to boost job creation in the country.

Jonathan also launched the fourth phase of the Youth Enterprise with Innovation in Nigeria (YouWin) programme to boost entrepreneurship development and create more jobs for youths and accelerate economic development.

At the inauguration, the president expressed the federal government’s concern about businesses affected by militancy and acts of terrorism in the recent past. He added that the interventions would heal their wounds and revive their businesses.
According to Jonathan, the fund would help accelerate the growth of SMEs and economic development.

He explained that the fourth edition of the YouWin programme was approved following the enthusiastic response of youths to the scheme and the impressive level of success so far achieved by beneficiaries.
He noted that unemployment still constituted a big challenge not only in Nigeria, but for governments around the world, pointing out that no real development could occur without jobs.

Jonathan disclosed that his administration had put several initiatives in place to create jobs, chief of which was the YouWin scheme, where training and monetary support had been given to youths with innovative business ideas to improve their lives and create jobs in the economy.

He also revealed that over 22,000 jobs had been created alongside other indirect employments through the first phase of the YouWin intervention, adding that the fourth phase is expected to create additional 44,000 jobs.

According to the president, the venture capital support would have unprecedented impact on SMEs sector if government could work with other investors to meet the objectives of the fund.

Essentially, the fund is to be used to support few existing YouWin businesses which have the potentials for further expansion and job creation.
He also promised to ensure that the venture capital fund is void of interference by ensuring those who qualify get fundings on merit and not on man-know-man basis.

Furthermore, he said both the YouWin and venture capital support would further boost the creativity of young Nigerians.
The new enterprise fund, he added, would enable those that had won previous grants from the YouWin programme take their businesses to the next level.

According to Jonathan, the fund which needed a seed capital of about $50million would require hard work on the side of government.
Jonathan said if government strives hard, it could attract more investors to contribute to ongoing efforts no matter how small.

"This fund will identify and further empower a few of you, some who are here and some new people that will join us, that are interested in expanding what they already have through the you win or even starting new businesses”, Jonathan said.

“You will not need to know somebody to access it. Hopefully when the disbursement of the third phase commences and by the time the fourth phase takes we are expecting a minimum of would have had 44,000 jobs created by young Nigerians for young Nigerians. Eighteen thousand who did not directly benefit from the scheme were trained and were able to access fund from different sources”, he stressed.

Source: http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/jonathan-launches-50m-venture-capital-fund-fourth-phase-of-youwin/194402/

@neksummi, its only for existing business! Both Youwin funded and other existing business can apply.

Youwin SME fund finally launched.

www.smegrowthfund.com.ng/