“Mr. Speaker, Government through the Development Bank Ghana (DBG) has established a GH¢500 million special credit programme: the DBG Emergency Economic Programme (DEEP) to support businesses in the agribusiness value chain over the next five years.
“The priority sectors are Poultry, Rice & Cereals,
Pharmaceutical manufacturing, Tourism, Textiles & Garments for investments to help build economic resilience.
“Mr. Speaker, to support SMEs with equity funding, DBG is also in the process of establishing a private equity fund with an initial capitalization of about GH¢400m (US$30m).
“DBG has fully on-boarded four Participating Financial Institutions (PFIs) and will engage other financial institutions to expand its loan channels. A total of seven loans amounting to GH¢ 245,322,000.00 was disbursed to SME’s saving over 1,000 jobs. DBG has partnered with a PFI to build a digital lending platform to shorten the processing time for lending to SMEs and increase its ability to reach a lot more businesses across the country,” he stated.
