Trade Minister call on SMEs to repackage themselves (26/8/09)

Story: Jennifer Dornoo & Jasmine Arku
THE Minister of Trade and Industry, Ms Hanna Tetteh, has called on small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) to repackage themselves in order to play an effective role in driving the economy.
She assured them of the Government's support and encouraged them to take their own initiatives to increase productivity and enhance economic growth.
Speaking at a Zenith Bank SMEs seminar to address the gap between financial institutions and SMEs in Accra yesterday, Ms Tetteh said one of the interventions being undertaken by the ministry was to build capacity and to strengthen the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI) to play a significant role in the provision of business development services.
She advised SMEs to formalise their operations by properly registering their companies and keeping proper financial records of their business transactions.
Ms Tetteh said access to credit had always been one of the major challenges confronting Ghanaian businesses irrespective of the sectors in which they operated.
She said the Government had developed programmes such as the Export Development and Investment Fund (EDIF) to improve access to credit for those in the export sector.
Ms Tetteh stated that although Ghana had had a sustainable economic growth over the last 25 years, economic performance showed that there had been an uneven pattern in terms of the social impact and the spatial distribution of growth.
She noted that the disparity in incomes between the wealthy and the poor had widened, while inequality continued to rise.
The Chief Executive Officer of Zenith Bank, Mr Andy Ojei, said SMEs had been identified as the catalyst for the growth of the economy, since they were the major source of income and employment.
He said available data from the Registrar General indicated that 90 per cent of companies registered were micro, small and medium enterprises.
He said the seminar was being organised to address two pertinent challenges — how money worked in businesses and the succession planning in a business organisation.
"It is our belief that at the end of the seminar, we would have provided the needed impetus towards providing the right platform for a solution, leading to the growth and development of our mutual interest,” Mr Ojei stated.
Participants at the seminar were taken through facts about money, simple cash management tools as well as what money in business meant.