The Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), says it will give priority to the development of small and medium scale entreprises (SMES) sector to boost export.

Mr Bede Obayi, SON Director in the Eastern zone, told our correspondent in Lagos that SMEs were veritable tools for the country’s economic development. “SON is placing high priority on the development of SMEs as veritable vehicles for poverty eradication, jobs creation, rural development and sustainable livelihood,” he said.

According to him, most of the SMEs products can easily meet the required standard if the products are subjected to necessary parameters and analysis.

“The problem we have with most of the operators is the failure to present their products for test. They rather prefer to produce and put on the market shelves,” he said.

Obayi said that subjecting such products to test could even reduce the production cost, have a comparative niche and attract right pricing.

“ We have discovered several instances where some products were even over-laced with expensive chemical whereas the cheaper one can serve the same purpose.

“Operators should not be afraid of subjecting their products to analysis. It will be to their benefits in the long run, “ he said.

According to him, large manufacturing companies know what to do to achieve standard and SMEs should be educated to subject their products to test.

He said that SON had strengthened its efforts on mentoring of firms to achieve standard and increase productivity.

“SON has a mechanism to monitor large and small manufacturing firms to meet standards.

“ We decided to put the initiatives in place to encourage the operators to do the right thing and enable the products to compete favourably at the international market,” he said.

SON has the responsibility of standardising and regulating the quality of all products in Nigeria and for the strict enforcement of powers of seizure, confiscation and destruction of substandard products.