MSMEs to be formalised and digitized,says NBSSI boss

The National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI) says plans are far advanced to formalise the small and medium scale enterprises by digitalising their operations.

The Executive Director, Kosi Yankey-Ayeh made these comments at the second edition of the 2020 Ghana Women Entrepreneurship Summit and indicated that some funds have been secured for about 500 MSMEs to help move their start-ups onto a digital platform.

According to her, the CAP Business Support Scheme has supported about 200,000 businesses with 70% being women.

“To date, the CAP Business Support has given support to over 200,000 beneficiaries, 70% of them are women. I remember very well the Deputy Minister [Robert Ahomka-Lindsay] at the launch said without fear or favour and we are very happy to say that majority of the people we gave to [loan] or actually all the 200,000 people…we barely know all of them but we’re very happy about the decisions we’ve made and it’s all because your voices were transformed into action”.

Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Robert Ahomka-Lindsay also told the media that the passage of the Ghana Enterprises Agency Bill will establish a fund scheme to support Micro-, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises.

“So the new agency’s focus will be linked directly to the MSMEs’ strategy. A number of activities with the MSME strategy, one of it is to formalize a huge aspect of our industry and our businesses that are formal. So we must help them become formalized but we’re not doing this because it’s a nice physiology. We’re doing this because we know that if we formalize businesses, it makes it easier to have policies that impact them.”

Furthermore, he said “It makes it easier for us to understand the challenges that they [MSMES] are facing so that we as government can put policies in place to support them. So, one of the key aspects of that is helping them formalise. Another that seems very simple is the definition of what is small, what is micro, what is medium enterprises, real definition and that definition is not static. If you look at what is a small enterprise in USA or Germany, we’re not going to be in the same place today but we’ll get there with time,” he stated.

The 2020 edition of the Ghana Entrepreneurship Summit brought together key stakeholders in the Small and Medium Scale Enterprise industry.

Source: Nicholas Brown