Ghana’s Medium Enterprises Hard Hit By Coronavirus

Micro, small and medium enterprises in Ghana have been hard-hit by the coronavirus pandemic.

This is according to the Executive Director of the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI), Kosi Yankey Ayeh.

She said in an address at the Ministry of Information’s briefing  that “Covid-19 has negatively impacted nations and our country Ghana has also been affected.”

She explained that some of the hardest hit Ghanaian businesses are in the category of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises in both the formal and informal sectors.

“This category makes up about 70% of the Ghanaian economy,” she said.

“In view of this the President Nana Addo Akufo-Addo in his wisdom committed GhC 600 million as a stimulus package as an emergency relief to these categories of businesses, ” she added.

Mrs. Kosi Yankey Ayeh said in the past few weeks, the NBSSI has had deep and extensive engagements with multiple stakeholders such as – financial institutions, associations, trade groups, service providers, consultants etc to ensure that we all align on the products that the business scheme will roll out to achieve a common goal.

“We have been supported by our Board and the Ministry of Finance and their team to ensure that we work assiduously to implement the project to all qualifying entities, ” she noted.

To ensure the success, efficiency and transparency of the programme, she added that an online portal has been developed to be approved by the Board of Directors, and will be stress-tested by independent consultants to ensure that all implementation challenges are minimized and tested.

” We will also create the opportunity for those who are not technology savvy or have limited access in remote districts to have access to partake in the business support scheme.

We believe that we are in the position to operationalizing the service soon. We also will be communicating to the general public as of today to get them ready to prepared, ” the NBSSI boss indicated.

Figures from the Statistical Survey Division reveal that micro enterprises constitute about 80 per cent of the MSME sector; small businesses constitute 15 per cent; and medium enterprises one per cent; and so the CAP Business Support Scheme is expected to reach over 200 thousand MSMEs in total.