Disbursement of funds for MSMEs to be made easy

Bolgatanga, April 11, GNA - Disbursing of funds under the Micro Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) Project would not be hindered by bureaucratic processes, Mr Welbeck Abra-Appiah, Finance Manager of the Project assured on Friday. "All that would be required of the clients would be for them to form groups and have convincing records, written or otherwise, to show that they can be trusted with money to do business", he said. Mr Abra-Appiah was speaking to business people in Bolgatanga after the project was launched for the Upper East Region. He explained that the MSME project was a government initiative to provide essential financing and technical support to business persons that would help their businesses to grow and also promote development in the country.

"The project is expected to generate growth in the national economy and lower poverty levels by increasing the competitiveness and employment levels of MSMEs in the economy", he said. This would be done by supporting entrepreneurship development, reducing business constraints faced by MSMEs, building an integral market access and trade facilitating infrastructure, developing and strengthening the capacity of local intermediaries to deliver financial and non-financial services as well as building their capacity to make productive use of services. It would also enhance enabling environment to stimulate increased investments in the MSME sector, through improved access to finance, trade promotion and trade facilitation.

Mr Abra-Appiah stated that clients of the project would be educated on record keeping, business management and writing of business reports, all of which would help them in future to access loans from the banks. He explained that small scale business persons were sometimes refused bank loans due to lack of proper records, which makes it difficult for the banks to trust such entrepreneurs. He said out of the 118.90 million-dollar seed money put up by the government with support from the International Development Agency (IDA) and International Finance Cooperation (IFC) of the World Bank, 40 million dollars would be used for lending, whilst the rest of the money absorbed into technical assistance components. The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Private Sector Development and President's Special Initiative is responsible for overall implementation and coordination of the Project.