Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber of Young Entrepreneurs (GCYE), Sherif Ghali, has revealed that quite a number of Small Medium Enterprises owned by entrepreneurs in the country cannot access financing for their businesses.

According to him, despite the growing number of entrepreneurs who encounter financing issues, the Chamber is striving in its own small way to see how “we can support entrepreneurship” in Ghana.

Ghana has joined over 200 countries to celebrate the 13^th Global Entrepreneurship Week slated for November 8 to November 14. The Global Entrepreneurship Week is a massive campaign to celebrate and empower entrepreneurs in every country and communities around the world. The celebration is particularly for persons who face issues such as structural barriers.

In celebration of the Global Entrepreneurship Week, Mr Ghali explained that the high interest rates some loans come with compared to other countries is “unfavourable” for entrepreneurs in a country like Ghana always “pushing” for entrepreneurship.

“One of the major challenges entrepreneurs face in Ghana is access to affordable capital or financing. We keep on saying this [and] it’s still happening. A lot of SMEs or entrepreneurs can’t access financing at all, even if they are able to access it, it’s of very high rate”.
Mr Sherif Ghali

Lack of technical support and unfavourable policies

Despite “celebrating entrepreneurship”, Mr Ghali disclosed that the country is not exempted from some of the challenges that entrepreneurs face. Another challenge he highlighted on was “lack of technical support” for entrepreneurs in Ghana.

Mr Ghali noted that a lot of entrepreneurs in Ghana do not have access to technical support in terms of a pool of expertise such accountants, auditors, legal persons that will advise entrepreneurs on what to do.

“Most of Ghanaian SMEs do not have the financial capacity to hire external people to give them this technical support. Here, government should maybe think of coming in. How do we put together the pool of experts we have?”
Mr Sherif Ghali

Touching on the impact of “unfavourable public policies” coupled with “high taxes” on entrepreneurship, Mr Ghali stressed that there have been regular conversations about the issues in the public space, although little has been done to salvage the situation. He explained that entrepreneurs who desire to have their products certified by institutions such as the Ghana Standards Authority or the Food and Drugs Authority encounter some challenges, thereby making the policies meant for them rather unfavourable.

“Our policies are not favourable at all for entrepreneurship. We are pushing for us to start business or for us to create more entrepreneurs in our economy but then we have a lot of unfavourable public policies. It will interest you to know that if you are an entrepreneur and you want to go and even legalize your business, registration alone is a big hurdle… Even if you want to abide by the rules and regulations to be able to pay let’s say your taxes, it’s not easy. You walk into GRA and they are already asking you to pay GHC500…”
Mr Sherif Ghali