Coronavirus: 110,000 women-owned businesses get support

Some 110,000 women-owned micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in Ghana have benefitted from government’s special fund for MSMEs, a deputy Greater Accra Regional Minister Elizabeth Sackey has said.

The comes after the government initiated the Coronavirus Alleviation Programme Business Support Scheme (CAP BuSS) intended to support micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) mainly owned by the youth from the adverse impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Elizabeth Sackey, the women-owned enterprises form parts of some 240,000 businesses that have so far received their portion of the GH¢750 million CAP BuSS fund.

“Again, we are reliably informed that the recent NBSSI and the Mastercard Foundation programme on assisting resilient MSMEs is also positively biased towards women,” she said this at the launch of the Ghana Women Entrepreneurship Summit.

“It is expected that about 70 percent of all beneficiary MSMEs should be female-owned and female-led. I am convinced that such a strategy is the surest way for post-COVID-19 economic recovery," Madam Sackey added.

Meanwhile, Executive Director of the NBSSI, Kosi Yankey Ayeh says it has created some 21,892 new jobs in the last three and half years through its various initiatives.