ASYMMETRIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SMEs FINANCING AND POVERTY REDUCTION IN NIGERIA: AN APPROACH FROM NARDL MODEL

Abstract: The panacea to poverty situation in Nigeria is hinge on the significant roles played by huge amount of money allocated to SMEs. Therefore, competitive prices, quality of product and efficient services are provided among industries whether public, private, big, small, simple or complex in operations. In Nigeria, it is projected to be seedbed of novelties, inventions, employment to alleviate poverty. Over the years, these important components are growing exponentially in the midst of huge SMEs financing in Nigeria, yet poverty indices keep rising. It is on this backdrop that this paper investigate the asymmetric connection amid SMEs financing and situations of Poverty in Nigeria evidence Non-linear Autoregressive Distributive Lag (NARDL) model using annual data spanning from (1992-2023). The asymmetric test discovered that co-integrating association exist among the dependent and independent as a variables of concern. The NARDL result shown that the short and long-run of SMEs components have distorted effect on poverty reduction, but the marginal impact of Commercial Bank credit to SMEs and Government Funding to SMEs is statistically significant in reducing poverty in a short run looking at both the positive and the negative components of the explanatory variable, while aggregate capitalization and interest rate does not demonstrate marginal impact on poverty reduction. The long run result uncovered that Commercial bank credit, government Funding negate the estimated sign and the effect is statistically insignificant, it was on the aggregate capitalization that reveals the effect on reducing poverty, but the impact is not statistically significant. The study recommended that; Government should establish SMEs Bank that will aimed at making loans available to SMEs as low as 3-4% interest rate to ameliorate the adverse financial challenges bedeviling the sector because most entrepreneurs relied on personal savings and family for funds.