By Francis Ntow
Accra, Sept. 19, GNA – The Ghana Export-Import (GEXIM) Bank says it is committed to breaking the age-long financial constraints of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in Ghana through concessional loans and grants.
“We will provide SMEs, not only with capital, but at concessionary interest rates of nine percent per annum to address the access to finance challenge that SMEs have had all this while,” Mr Bright Evans Darko, Head of SME Department, GEXIM, said.
He said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency after the final regional sensitisation exercise on the Small and Medium-sized Enterprise Growth and Opportunity (SME GO) initiative, in Accra, on Wednesday, September 18.
The Greater Accra sensitisation climaxed the 16-regional engagement with SMEs and other stakeholders, officially opening the SME GO initiative for implementation.
Mr Darko encouraged interested businesses to quickly sign up to the programme by reaching out to the Ghana EXIM Bank, Consolidated Bank Ghana (CBG), and the Ghana Enterprises Agency (GEA) for support.
He asked SMEs who apply for financial support under the SME GO initiative to wait for a 30-day turnaround period for response from the participating financial institutions.
He stated that the Bank would also provide technical and production assistance to small businesses using its yet to be established modern food processing plant to spur value addition and export of Ghanaian products.
Ms Rosemary Beryl Archer, Deputy Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in a speech read on behalf of the CEO of GEXIM, said the Bank would provide loans, technical support and advisory services to beneficiary SMEs.
That, Ms Beryl Archer said, was aligned with the Bank’s commitment to championing the government’s agenda to transform the Ghanaian economy into an export-led one.
“In the last seven years, the Bank has made a deliberate attempt to provide various forms of support to Ghanaian SMEs with the recent one being a capacity building programme for over hundred Ghanaian SMEs by a team of experts from Thailand,” she said.
Mr Michael Okyere Baafi, Deputy Minister, Ministry of Trade and Industry, urged the participating financial institutions not to renege on their pledge to the initiative, saying, “the sensitisation is over… the SMEs want to see you in action.”
He pledged the Ministry’s commitment to working collaboratively with the participating financial institutions to ensure that the SMEs would have access to affordable finance to take their businesses to the next level.
Launched by the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, on July 16, 2024, the SME GO initiative is to assist Ghanaian SMEs to scale up and build their capacities as sustainable businesses able to compete favourably in the international marketplace.
Under the initiative, SMEs would be given the needed funding, requisite technology and innovation, knowledge enhancement and other relevant resources and tools to aid their growth into international giants.
GNA