Executive Director of the Ghana Enterprise Agency, Kosi Yankey-Ayeh, has disclosed that government via her outfit has disbursed about 80% funds to vulnerable women in the informal sector. She noted that this was done through the COVID-19-Allviation Fund.
According to her, women in the informal sector need support programs from government.
Additionally, Madam Yankey-Ayeh intimated that the Agency must consolidate efforts to transition the informal sector to the formal sector.
“Our informal sector is huge and majority of them are women. It is about time that our interventions and the work we do move them from the informal sector to a more formalized and sustained sector. So that when challenges like the pandemic occur; they can still be resilient.”
Madam Kosi Yankey-Ayeh further recounted the various intervention programs government has undertaken to help sustain businesses. She explained that four of the projects targeted Ghanaian women in eight regions of the country currently experiencing poverty.
“In keeping our focus on women and to leverage of government’s flagship programmes; the government helped to alleviate the plights of Ghanaians after and during covid-19. They rolled out the coronavirus alleviation programme. In all, we had about 9,000 applicants, close to 60% of them were women. 80% were in the informal sector and there was also a conscious effort from our side to ensure that the women in the informal sector were included”.
Canadian government supports women
On her part, Canadian High Commissioner to Ghana, Kati Csaba, revealed that the Canadian government has supported the country with developmental projects. According to her the support is worth about 50 million Canadian dollars over the last couple of years.
Kati Csaba further indicated that about the Canadian government has supported inclusive growth with about 125 million Canadian dollars. This is to help the country achieve sustained economic growth.
“We provide bilateral portfolio development projects to Ghana every year, approximately worth 50 million Canadian dollars”.
Presently, the Canadian government has announced 30 million Canadian dollars to support four innovative projects over a period of four to five years. 31,000 Ghanaian women across the country will directly benefit from the funding.
“I’m excited and optimistic as well as perhaps a little impatient to witness the next decade of Ghana’s economic growth”.
CAD Ghana urges patronage of products
Meanwhile, Chief Executive Officer of Community Agric Development Ghana (CAD Ghana), Mr Prince Akwaaba, has appealed to Ghanaians to purchase products made in Ghana to support Small Medium Enterprises (SME’s) for rapid growth.
According to him, SMEs are struggling in business now because initially, distributors either made upfront payment or payment by instalment, in a form of pre-financing.
However, that practice has changed. Now, distributors rather wait for the product to be delivered before payments are made.
He further attributed low patronage of products to the slowdown in economic activities due to the pandemic. Mr. Akwaaba lamented that due to this, ‘’you can send products to a distributor for one month or two with no payment.”
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