Group trains women on financial literacy

LAGOS, Nigeria –  Mrs Olanike Mike-Taiwo, President, Women Liberation and Transformation Group, says she has trained no fewer than 500 market women on financial literacy and record keeping in their businesses.

Mike-Taiwo made this known during the training programme for market women at the Ayobo International Market, Alimosho Local Government, Lagos State on Friday. Mike-Taiwo said that the training was informed by the discovery that most traders do not keep trading record of their business.

“We are training them because we discovered that most market women are in businesses but they don’t keep record. This is because they are not financially literate; they might be sound but some of them are not educated at all while some are semi-educated.

“This is why we have come to teach them on how to be financially literate and how they can keep their business record because if they don’t, it will affect the profitability of their business.

“Hence, if they are not able to do proper cost identification, they might not be able to identify their revenue from their profits because they don’t keep records,” she said.

Mike-Taiwo said that she gave them record books and calculators to enable them keep and record their daily sales

She said that at the end of the training, her organisation was able to teach them how to calculate their daily expenses so they could determine daily deduction of their cost, however, most of them do it yearly.

The facilitator, Mrs Adetokunbo Amosu, a Financial Literacy Trainer, said the training was important because the organisation realised that the heart of commerce was in the enterprise.

“We realised that the heart of commerce is in the enterprise and this market women are the means we can improve enterprise but most of them are into business with little knowledge about costing. However, this training will now tell them on what to do and most of them come to the market almost every day but they don’t know the market record to keep and the reason they need to keep it.

“They think they are making profit but they are not but we have taught them on how to go about it,” she said.

Speaking on behalf of the market women, the Iya Oloja (Market Leader) of Ayobo International Market, Mrs Ajike Sanni, said that the training would further improve their businesses, having learnt how to keep records of their business.

“I have gained a lot from this training, before I don’t know how to calculate and remove my expenditure from the sales before l know the profit. I don’t separate my transportation cost, shop rent and other expenses from my sales but now I have been enlightened on how to go about it.

“This will enable us to know the net profit after all other expenses have been removed,” she said. Sanni urged the beneficiaries to make use of what they have been taught in their trading activities. (NAN) (www.nannews.ng)