As part of its efforts in providing technical and business support to traders, the Growth and Employment in States (GEMS4) Micro Retail Initiative, has recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Enugu Amaka Buyers Cooperative (EABC) to implement a wholesale buying model that will help market Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) at reduced manufacture/distributor rates.
The GEMS4 Micro Retail Initiative has been facilitating business opportunities for traders in selected states, and Enugu State is now on the train.
This initiative provides higher profit margins to help the economically challenged rural, sub-urban and urban poor dwellers who have the drive to develop their own businesses.
With more than 100 primary Cooperative societies converged into this secondary cooperative, the Enugu State SME Centre and the Human Capital Development, Poverty Alleviation and Cooperatives are to serve as support teams as major distributors in Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) in Ogbete, Enugu and other stakeholders in the state are also invited to be members.
In a statement obtained by our correspondent recently, the representative of the Department for International Development DFID-GEMS4, Sheriff Mohammed took the elected, interim executives of EABC through a thorough training an Wholesale Buying Club (WBC) model to enable them coordinate the buying clubs.
The WBC model provides access to markets and aims at increasing incomes and providing employment for poor micro-retailers through a wholesale buying group model.
The model is managed by an apex organization like EABC which creates buyer groups aggregates purchasing power to order stock collectively, this negotiating lower wholesale prices from suppliers of fast moving consumer goods.
Meanwhile, the interim chairman, Mr Roy Mbah and his entourage paid a courtesy visit to a major FMCG distributor, Chief F.C. Chukwu, in Enugu South LGA whom the EABC exco have been linked to.