Make the most of SME grant – GEA boss to entrepreneurs
The CEO of the Ghana Enterprises Agency (GEA), Kosi Yankey-Ayeh has encouraged beneficiaries of the second phase of the Ghana Economic Transformation Project (GETP) grant to make the most of the funds given them to ensure that their businesses become profitable.
The grant is to provide liquidity and support to enable SMEs to adjust and grow out of the Covid-19 crisis in selected sectors of the economy, with one hundred and thirty-five (135) small medium enterprises (SMEs) expected to benefit from GH⊄20.6m
The programme under the Ghana Economic Transformation Project will have a strong focus on Ghanaian export-oriented firms, female-owned enterprises, companies owned by persons with disability and youth enterprises.
Speaking at the Grant Agreement Signing and Orientation Ceremony in Accra on Wednesday, Ms Yankey-Ayeh said “so today, we are giving you support as you go out there, we will come, monitor the work you doing, those who don’t use it for what is supposed to be used for, would have to refund the money. But there are team of consultants from the World Bank and other partners who will come to make sure you are implementing.
The success of your work and what you do with the funds will determine if in the second stage we are going to support you. For those who benefitted from the CAPBUSS, who have started paying, we would use that to judge if we should accept this contract and give you any funding. For those who will use it think of the number of jobs, opportunities we will create for others.”
Under the Covid Response Grant, Mrs. Yankey-Ayeh indicated that they have provided support, funding to build the businesses and to stabilize them and in the first phase, 370 businesses were supported.
Further she added that in the second phase, which is what they working on now, in this current phase of the group, they have already done disbursement for the first group, and currently are at the second group phase.
“The idea is to give them access to funding based on their applications they have put together to build and grow their businesses, and to support them, so we look across the spectrum women, persons with disability -this time we pay a close attention to them, so when the project first phase ended, we made a strong case to the World Bank and Ministry and Finance, and the case we made was that, there is still a major need because you still see there were a lot of businesses that had not received the funds and they were generous enough to give us the funding that will help them grow their business and support and that is what we seek to do.”
A Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Nana Ama Dokua Asiamah-Adjei underscored the desire of government to “nurturing the interest of more SMEs, promotion and development in the country.”
For the minister, it forms part of government’s firm resolve for the private sector to recover from the lingering ruins of the pandemic.
Beneficiaries that qualify for the grant includes SMEs that are in sectors including agriculture,agro-processing, manufacturing, textiles and garments as well as tourism and hospitality industry.
