Over 700,000 entrepreneurs have benefitted from state interventions to small and medium-sized businesses coming from the Ghana Enterprises Agency (GEA) over the last four years, Chief Executive Officer of the agency, Kosi Yankey-Ayeh discloses.
“We’re doing a lot when it comes to promoting access to funding for small business; the government has been very intentional about this agenda,” she says in an interview with Single African Market.
In the years ahead, the GEA boss says her office will be seeking stronger partnerships with the private sector, development partners, civil society organizations and allied bodies to better serve the interest of MSMEs in the country.
According to her, access to quality funding remains a major hurdle in the way of most small and medium enterprises, adding that the GEA was aggressively working to tackle the situation.
“We’ve launched an Access to Finance Technical Committee to drive the understanding of how to get quality funding.Our [GEA’s] new Act allows us to set up an MSME Fund which will help us to fund micro, small and medium enterprises to become competitive,” she notes.
Despite the huge impact of the government interventions on the private sector, Mrs. Ayeh admits that most young entrepreneurs remain doubtful about these programmes, a situation she attributes to the lack of public knowledge on these initiatives and mindset towards state interventions and stimulus programmes. Most often when the government comes up with interventions, very few people take them seriously. The other challenge is lack of knowledge. Most people tend to follow individuals who have little belief in some of these interventions because they are not well informed about them. “Those who believe in these support initiatives and decide to take advantage of them will benefit a lot.
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