The Executive Director of the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI), Kosi Yankeh-Ayeh has expressed her commitment to impartially disburse funds from the Coronavirus Alleviation Program Business Support Scheme.
Speaking in an interview, Mrs. Yankeh-Ayeh denied speculations by the Ghana Hoteliers Association over their members being denied access to the stimulus package for their struggling businesses.
“The conversation and the information we’ve given is on the transparency of the project and…some of the challenges that we faced. I mentioned that a few of them [businesses] had people coming with dead relatives’ information and requesting for support. And I think I made that as a general statement, not specifically targeted [at hoteliers]. But it’s easy for maybe an association to think it was being targeted because it was brought up during the conversation by the presenter. I haven’t really commented much on this because I think it’s a non-starter and I personally believe that the conversation was taken out of context,” she explained.
Explaining her stance on the matter, the NBSSI Executive Director further assured the Board’s resolve in working assiduously to effectively disburse funds to businesses in need.
“At the beginning of this program, we did mention to people that as much as possible, because of the size and the magnitude of the demand and also the size of funds we have, it will really be important if people applied once. As much as possible we will have to focus on how best it is that we deliver to as many people as possible”.
Meanwhile, the Ghana Hotels Association is optimistic of the gradual bustling of business albeit its slow pace, about four weeks into the resumption of international flights operations in the country.
Speaking in an interview, the President of the Association, Dr. Edward Ackah-Nyamike, said his members are being quite moderate in their expectations.
“Some of the reports we’ve received indicate that some hotels are still doing below 10 and 20 percent. Don’t forget that, in the year of return, some went as high as 65 percent to 70 percent, so coming down to 10 and 15 percent is quite significant. We are also aware that the Ghana Tourism Authority is embarking on quite a number of projects just to encourage domestic tourism and just recently the world tourism day was celebrated. These programs call for people to move across the country and all of these help the business.
“So, we hope there will be some improvement. But for now we cannot say that it is anywhere close to what we had last year and we are even envisaging that it’s going to go on for quite some time before we get back to normal business.”
The country’s airports were reopened on September 1, 2020 after a lengthy shut down period as part of government’s COVID-19 preventive measures.
