A BILL recently passed in Parliament has mandated the Ghana Enterprises Agency (GEA) to set up a fund that will help Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) resolve challenges associated with access to finance.
According to the Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Robert Ahomka-Lindsay, the Ghana Enterprise Agency Bill, which was yet to be assented to by the President, Nana Akufo-Addo, would provide medium to long-term capital needs of businesses, hence facilitating their growth.
“You would recall when the president said that one of the business sectors of our economy that had been hit hard by the Covid-19 was our MSME and so he set up CAPBuss funds,” he said.
The minister was speaking in an interview at the second edition of the Ghana Women Entrepreneurship Summit (GWES) organized by the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI) in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation under the Young Africa Works initiative.
The theme for the summit was ‘Women Entrepreneurs: The Cornerstone of Economic Resilience’.
He noted that converting NBSSI to the GEA was long overdue as there was need to direct the focus of NBSSI towards a National MSME Strategy which had a component of promoting the formalization of businesses.
“If you would remember, the NBSSI was set up in 1984. At the time, we couldn’t get tooth paste in Ghana and we all had to go to Togo. The world in 1984 was very different from the world in 2020,” he said.
Formalization of businesses, he said, would make it easy for government to define the scope of businesses, understand challenges and design policies that were impactful.
Executive Director of NBSSI, Kosi Yankey-Ayeh, also spoke on the digitization drive of the NBSSI where she encouraged local businesses to embrace the concept so as to remain competitive, adding that “you can not access markets without going digital.”
Regional Director West, Central and North Africa Mastercard Foundation, Nathalie Gabala, said the foundation remained committed to growing the entrepreneurial ability of your women in Ghana.
With women representing more than 50 per cent of Ghana’s population, there is the need to ensure their inclusion in all aspects of social and economic endeavour.
“Advancing the course of women is a critical driver of economic prosperity and an enabler of growth,” she said.
By Issah Mohammed