Ghana – The Government is optimistic about the success of the “YouStart Programme” as local banks commit $5 billion from their portfolio of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to support young entrepreneurs over the next three years.
According to Ghana’s Finance Minister Ken Ofori Atta, this will fundamentally boost the country’s entrepreneurial drive.
Speaking at the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with participating financial institutions for the YouStart Commercial Component, Mr. Ofori Atta said the deal with the banks will help entrepreneurs get access to finance to grow their enterprises.
He claimed that this package couldn’t have arrived at a better moment that the administration is getting ready to welcome a mission from the International Monetary Fund into the nation to start negotiations for an economic program.
Saying: “We need to create the opportunities in which people can be trained as entrepreneurs; and they also hire other people to grow. I mean if you look at the population statistics of almost 37% of our people being between 15 and 35, it creates a lot of pressure. And I think it is incumbent on us to create the financial system with training and reward system that encourages entrepreneurship to take risks”.
The Minister also stated that the partnerships with the banks is key to the sustainability of developing the entrepreneurship eco-system.
“The Banks have committed about ¢5 billion over three years to be deployed to SME’s and that’s what we going to work with for it to happen. And so that will create excitement, especially, in this period that we are also having an arrangement with the IMF. So that we move beyond dependence on government and donors into our own creative energies”.
The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Bankers Association, John Awuah, who spoke on behalf of the banks, stated their mandate to assist entrepreneurs with substantial capital to develop and grow the SME sector.
“As a nation, we will have recognised that we need to build our own if the impact of Covid-19 taught us any lesson at all. It means that we need to have a homegrown economy, an economy owned and managed by Ghanaians.”
“So this signing ceremony is about attestation that the public and the private sector can work together to create the value and entrepreneurship country that we have all been yearning for”, he stressed.
“As a community of banks, we helped the Ministry of Finance to design a product that we believe will help propel businesses forward particularly younger and smaller businesses to move them to the next level. I think is positive development. We only have to make sure that what we have put on paper when it comes to the execution we all come to the table in the manner in which the agreement had been signed”, he added.
Meanwhile, Government is expected to officially launch the YouStart programe in November 2022.
