The Executive Director of the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI), Mrs. Kosi Yankeh-Ayeh has intimated that the passage of the new act transitioning the Board into an agency will support small businesses.
Speaking on the new development of government assenting to the passage of the Act, Mrs. Kosi Yankeh-Ayeh assured SMEs that more funding programmes will be executed under the new mandate.
“For many MSMEs across the nation, I think it’s important for you and also it’s really vital that we actually celebrate its success. What they need to expect is an institution that is strengthened and resourced to be able to deliver on its mandate. Which is ensuring that there’s enough financial support because there’s an MSME fund that is going to be set up to ensure that the access to finance challenges that a lot of MSMEs face are really taken care of”.
Explaining the need to thoroughly execute the new charge, she noted that, apt management and efficiency in terms of financial support is dependent on its resilience and resources to deliver.
“It’s also important for a lot of MSMEs to see and understand the importance of formalization; That this new institution will support and guide and really protect these MSMEs at a vulnerable time like this to ensure that they are sustainable, that they accelerate the growth of their business and that they are able to transform the economy and also create employment for as many people as possible.
“So, the opportunities and the direction of this new agency is endless. As I have mentioned recently, one of the major things we’ve been able to do is fundraise, and importantly through our district offices to be able to implement and bring BDS support to the doorstep of various businesses and people across the nation.
“So, what they should expect and continue to expect is better services, being able to see that NBSSI from a budget of GHC 19,000 when I took over to GHC 1 billion. This amount of funding is really to ensure that businesses have the needed support and resources for them to grow, accelerate and really strengthen this Ghanaian economy”.
Kosi Yankeh-Ayeh
Parliament on November 3, 2020 passed the Ghana Enterprises Agency Act to change the name of the NBSSI into an agency in order to have a bigger mandate for the MSMEs.
Meanwhile, Richmond Frimpong, an economist, has cautioned that, the country’s economy will be in a perilous state if stimulus packages are not paid back.
According to him, this is due to the fact that most funding offered are borrowed from external sources.
“It depends on a number of things. So, whatever package the government gave is called a stimulus package and usually stimulus packages are meant to stimulate the economy and so my expectation is that we know exactly how much you have given out as loans are going to stimulate to see off as output on the economy…”
“If those figures come up in real time and they do so much that our GDP can now hold the debts that just went out, the government may choose to say you can pay them at a lesser rate but to say it’s for free will be strange because those funds were not funds that were internally generated from our revenues. They were funds that we went borrowing for and so for nothing at all we have to pay those funds back the same way we gave them out.
“We can equally just rush out or clean out the interest rates but to say they are for free entirely, that will be strange and it’s going to have a very difficult effect on our GDP and most importantly our debt to GDP”.
Richmond Frimpong
