SMEs Without TIN Won’t Benefit From GH¢600m Stimulus – NBSSI Boss

Businesses should obtain Tax Identification Numbers (TIN) before they can benefit from the GH¢600 million stimulus package, the Executive Director of the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI) has said.

Government has earmarked GH¢600 million as stimulus package for small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) to ease the pressure on them posed by the Covid-19.

According to her ‘No TIN numbers, No stimulus’.

She assured the general public that her firm will be fair in the distribution of the GH¢600 million package.

She said the disbursements will be transparent with external auditors in place to audit the funds, hence no need to entertain fear of introducing partisan politics into the allocation.

“I can assure that there will be no partisan politics in this and the reason why we say that is that this is open and that is why we brought technology in.

“There will be external auditors as well. We don’t even know the beneficiaries. It is open so let us allow people to apply. What I challenge people to do is to actually show up with the data that is needed and fill the right data.” She told Alfred Ocansey, the host of the Sunrise morning show on 3FM.

She added: “People ask why NBSSI in this. We have been doing this for a long time but nobody has talked about politics but now that people see or hear of it then they assume.

“They are only assuming but let us not make the assumption. We have 178 offices in 178 districts called business advisory centres. We are in almost all the sixteen regional capitals, we provide the service, we have been doing it.”

“For the past three years, we have actually facilitated up to GH¢45 million, we have support a 100,000+ people build their capacity but no one has said it is political.”