The Enhancing Growth in New Enterprises (ENGINE) Programme has organised an Investment Dialogue for entrepreneurs in the Northern Region to facilitate the access to a cheaper source of funding for their businesses.

The programme, organised in collaboration with the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), was held in Tamale on the theme: “Raising Capital on the Ghana Alternative Market.”

The dialogue was co-funded by the African Development Bank (AfDB) through the Ministry of Finance and the Department for International Development (DFID).

The programme was organised mainly to clarify the issues relating to listing on the Ghana Alternative Market (GAX) and how it could help to provide a relatively cheaper source of funds to entrepreneurs seeking capital which cannot be provided by traditional financial institutions in Ghana.

Opening the programme, Mr Ekow Afedzie, the Deputy Managing Director of GSE, said GSE had created an Alternative Market to target and facilitate the listing of SMEs onto the Stock Market.

He described it as a good platform for promising SMEs who are thinking of having medium to long term funds.

The dialogue, which brought together over 170 participants, provided opportunities to promising entrepreneurs identified through the ENGINE programme to seek alternative sources of funding for their businesses.

The session also helped the entrepreneurs to deepen their awareness of equity financing through listing on the Ghana Alternative Market.

Mr Francis Opoku-Mensah, the Enterprise Finance Manager of ENGINE, advised entrepreneurs to take advantage of new emerging funding opportunities from the GAX to secure long term capital to scale up their businesses.

He explained that this would help address investment gaps that SMEs in Ghana were confronted with as a result of high cost of capital and lack of long term funds available for investments by the financial institutions.

The GAX is an innovative market operated by the GSE, which focuses on businesses with potential for growth and accommodates companies at various stages of their development including start-ups and existing enterprises, both small and medium.

The African Development Bank is supporting the listing of Small and Medium Enterprises on the GAX with an interest free funding.