World Bank to support NYEP with $50m

The World Bank is to assist the National Youth Employment Pro­gramme (NYEP) with funds from a $50 million facility for the entrepreneurship module of the programme.

The facility has been earmarked for the development of the youth, ICT, agriculture and the oil and gas sector and, according to the National Co-coordinator of the NYEP, Mr Abuga Pele, the funding would ensure that entrepreneurs born out of the pro­gramme were nurtured and strengthened at each step taken in their entrepreneurial endeavours.

Speaking at the 62nd New Year School of the Institute of Continuing and Distance Education (ICDE) of the University of Ghana, Legon, Mr Pele said the new module would have a ripple effect, as it would harness the pool of skills currently avail­able at the NYEP in business, finance, commerce, marketing, among others.

He said some people with Master’s degrees in Business and other programmes had contacted the NYEP Secretariat for job placement but no opportu­nities had been found and so the new module would harness all those efforts in innovative enterprises for the country.

Also to be reopened into the initiative is the Council for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (COTVET), which will monitor resources, business plans and each stage of the process.

In his presentation on youth and entrepreneur­ship, Mr Pele identified youth unemployment as a global and national challenge.

The challenge, however, had not been recognised as such by governments globally nor strategically planned for, despite the general global consent that youth unemployment had implications “too danger­ous and serious to ignore”, he said.

Presenting youth unemployment statistics, Mr Pele said World Bank figures put it at 65 per cent, while Ghana Trades Union Congress (TUC) esti­mates were that 250,000 youth were added yearly to the unemployed bracket.

He said the NYEP, despite the haste in its imple­mentation, was a good model for tackling the chal­lenge but had persistently suffered from funding challenges to date.

He added that with the new focus of instituting an exit plan for beneficiaries and processes for legal backing for the programme, the challenges would be overcome.

He also said the government had approved an increase in the percentage of the communications service tax (CST) from 20 per cent to 60 per cent to fund the NYEP.

Source: Daily Graphic