BMrs Grace Anim-Yeboah interacts with owners of SMEs
Barclays Bank Ghana marked this year’s World SME Day in Tamale by organising a special SME clinic for businesses in northern Ghana.
This was to help them benefit from the bank’s tailor-made capacity-building programme aimed at educating and supporting SMEs in running a sound and sustainable business.
The World SME Day is a United Nations recognized day to raise public awareness about the contribution of small and medium enterprises to sustainable development.
The UN General Assembly, recognizing the importance of SMEs, decided to declare 27th June asthe micro, small and medium-sized enterprises Day.The Day was first celebrated in 2017.
Speaking to participants, Business Banking Director at Barclays Bank Ghana, Grace Anim-Yeboah, said SMEs formed a core part of the bank’s business and these capacity-building engagements are to help SME clients improve their business processes, implement good corporate governance structures, improve customer service, instill excellent human resource management practices and have better access to credit.
Nana Essilfuah Boison, Marketing and Corporate Relations Director, used the occasion to update partcipants on the bank’s transition to Absa, and the opportunities the change presented to customers and all other stakeholders of the bank.
About 400 SMEs benefitted from the training. Beneficiary SMEs were also taken through a series of sessions including Group Imports, Credit Sanctioning, Fraud Alerts and Forex Trading, among others.
They were also introduced to the bank’s various products and services developed for their benefit. Among the new products and services for businesses are Digital Banking, Mobile Money Collection Solution and Barclays Business Club.
Last year, the Barclays SME clinics supported more than 750 clients with various capacity-building programmes. This year, many more are expected to benefit from it.