The Ghana Enterprise Agency has commenced national stakeholder engagement for the second phase of the COVID-19 Response Grant to provide funding and support to help SMEs recover from the COVID-19 crisis in a few key economic sectors.
The second phase of the programme under the Ghana Economic Transformation Project, with additional grant size of $5 million, will place a particular emphasis on Ghanaian export and export-oriented small and medium sector businesses.
Between September 2021 and March 2022, the project’s first phase distributed GHS28.7 million to more than 370 SMEs, including 158 women-owned firms among the beneficiaries.
At least 134 new permanent and 156 casual jobs have also been created by the beneficiaries of the GEA SME Grant Programme within the period.
Mrs Kosi Yankey-Ayeh, the Chief Executive Officer of GEA, stated the goal of the Grant programme was to ensure that businesses were resilient and prepared to help transform the economy.
“I think the bottom line is to see resilience in businesses that have the potential to transform the economy and the nation and those who have the capability to actually create employment as well so that we can actually deal with some of the challenges of job creation,” she said after engagement of stakeholders in Accra.
She said the second phase intervention was targeting about 400 small, medium enterprises to give them financial support to sustain and scale their business.
The Ghana Enterprises Agency (GEA) – an agency under the Ministry of Trade and Industry, is one of the key Technical Implementing Agencies (TIAs) through which the World Bank Funded Ghana Economic Transformation Project (GETP) is deploying grants as part of government’s initiatives to promote private investments and firm growth in non-resource-based sectors.
