Last Updated- May 27, 2009 7:28 - - 0 Comments


Small businesses call for easing of requirements for granting bank loans

Small and medium-scale entrepreneurs in the Volta Region have called for the easing of conditionalities that banks require before granting loans to small businesses.

The practice, according to them, was killing business initiative, making big businesses bigger and leading to folding up of small and medium-scale businesses.

“Before you get a loan, you must have a landed property or some other valuables. How can a small businessman have such things? In the end, it is only the big businesses with assets which can access such loans and get bigger,” one of them fumed.

The businessmen expressed the concern at a stakeholders’ forum organised for them by the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) and sponsored by the Business Advocacy Challenge (BUSAC) Fund.

On the theme: “Using the Media to Strength­en Business Advocacy”, the initiative of the GJA, which began last year, seeks to propel the media to effectively articulate the concerns of small-scale business entrepreneurs and facilitat­ed by the KAB Governance Consult.

The theme was “Promoting the Micro and Small Scale Enterprise Sector – The Role of Ghana Export Promotion Council”.

The business persons gave extensive lamen­tations about the struggle they had to under­go to raise capital to enhance their activities, say­ing the situation was a disincentive to the youth, who otherwise would have liked to venture into private businesses rather than depending on the government for employment.

The government, they said, must enact legis­lation to address these bottlenecks in order to create an enabling environment to propel small businesses to higher levels and to encourage the springing up of more small businesses that would ultimately address the unemployment problem of the country.

Speaking on the theme, the Executive Secre­tary of the Ghana Export Promotion Council (GEPC), Mr Edward Collins Boateng, observed that one problem confronting small businesses in Ghana was that they produced in the hope that they could find ready market for their produce, advising that they needed to research to establish the need before going into production.

He entreated them to avail themselves of the Export Fundamental Programme run by the GEPC as part of its capacity-building drive for businesses so that they would have adequate knowledge and the expertise that would make them efficient and effective business people.

The Volta Regional Projects Officer of the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI), Mr Ransford Kani, decried the manner in which the medium and Small Loans Centre (MASLOC) project was abused for political expediency.

He said monies for the project were diverted to the district assemblies, which claimed they dis­bursed them but could not produce documentary evidence to support such disbursements.

Mr Kani advocated a review of the project to ensure that it brought maximum benefit to those for which it was intended.

The Chief Executive Officer of the KAB Gov­ernance Consult, Mr Kwasi Afriyie Badu, com­menting on the same issue, called for the restruc­turing of MASLOC, stressing the need to get the right leadership and political support to ensure that it became productive enough to bring the needed support to small and medium-scale industries.

“However well-purposed MASLOC was, in the end it created a lot of difficulties that did not bring the expected benefits to small-scale industries,” he stated.

Source: Daily Graphic

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