By Agnes Ansah
Accra, March 27, GNA – Mr Julian Opuni, the Managing Director of Fidelity Bank Ghana, says the bank will continue to implement initiatives to enable indigenous businesses to thrive and contribute their quota to economic transformation.
These include advancing innovative financial assistance to Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), deploying robotics, introducing local languages in operations, and enhancing digital financial offerings.
Mr Opuni said this at a media engagement on Wednesday to project these initiatives and pledge the bank’s commitment to supporting the creative arts sector through the ‘Orange Inspire’ programme.
“We believe the creative industry always gets left out, so this year we are launching the Orange Inspire, which will focus on the creative sector, and we are going to be offering mentorship, funding and grants to the creative sector,” he said.
Mr Opuni indicated that the bank would use local languages to enhance its financial literacy and awareness programmes, making Ghanaians understand the importance of savings and investments as well as business and personal growth.
On digital innovations, the Managing Director pledged the Bank’s resolve to engaging some of its clients on social media platforms including, WhatsApp, to make banking more convenient and accessible.
It had already started implementing some programmes to inspire the youth in agriculture, providing them with funding and technical assistance to modernise farming while developing the agric value chain.
The Fidelity Bank had been providing financial and non-financial resources to SMEs and young entrepreneurs to harness social impact potential, build capacities, and enable businesses to grow and scale up.
The initiatives include the GHS1 million Green Tech Challenge, where grant funding were given to support innovative solutions addressing critical challenges within the country’s agricultural value chain.
He mentioned the Fidelity Young Entrepreneurs Fund, which provided funding to easily scalable businesses that were solving societal problems, and utilising climate-smart adaptation or mitigation change processes in their activities.
In support of the continent’s growth and intra-trade agenda, Mr Opuni said the Bank would leverage the experience with Malaysia to deepen regional partnerships with other financial institutions to offer digital services to customers.
He expressed confidence in Ghana’s financial institutions and businesses in driving the country’s economic transformation and called on the media to ensure that stories and discussions focused on support in that direction.
He cautioned against uninformed stories and misinformation, which had the tendency of jeopardising the gains made over the years by Ghanaians.
Mr Opuni called on the Government to provide an enabling environment for financial institutions to support private sector growth, making them to lead the implementation of key policies to spur economic growth and create jobs.
GNA
ABD