Nume Ekeghe
The National Institute of Credit Administration plans to commence a campaign to encourage creditors to pay what they owe on time.
The institute in a statement urged creditors to ensure that all payments are made to suppliers and other stakeholders they owe within seven to 14 days.
The Registrar/Chief Executive Officer, NICA, Prof. Chris Onalo, said the ‘National Pay Your Bill Month’ campaign, aims to help creditors to do things right.
He said, “The national campaign will create awareness that if you are indebted to anybody, be it business indebtedness or individual indebtedness within that month, you should repay. The institute will emphasize the need for you to appeal to your conscience to pay what you are owing the next person, even if you can’t pay all, pay something, so that is part of the awareness creation.”
Onalo added that the institute is coming up very strongly with support for those who are up coming, especially the Small and Medium Scale enterprises.
He noted that NICA will create awareness to the multinationals, blue chip, conglomerate companies, and financial institutions among others that it is immoral for any of these high profile business organizations to delay payment of the invoice of the SMEs.
Onalo added: “If SMEs supply something, within seven days to 14 days, you should be able to pay the invoice. Don’t subject them to your own internal policies that you cannot pay them until after 30 days.
“You know, these people borrowed money to execute the order that you gave to them, and you are now saying to them, you will pay them after one month; that is not fair. So, we need to have a national consensus. We need the legislation, where the small and medium scale enterprises which form the bulk of the economy, should have the invoice presented and get paid within seven days.”
According to him, this will enable the SMEs to utilize the money for more businesses and increased revenue because they often times borrow these funds.
He observed that the SMEs have rents to pay, their operational running costs and other things they are spending money on, and should not have their monies tied down.
“That is part of the awareness, we plan to make sure that people begin to see credit economy as the best system that stimulates economic wide growth involving all sectors of the economy,” Onalo said.
