A partnership between Access Bank and the Graphic Business newspaper to support the growth of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the country has so far impacted more than 6,500 enterprises across the country.
The
collaboration seeks to provide interventions through funding and technical expertise
to empower SMEs and help grow their businesses to enable them to contribute to
economic development.
At
the Access Bank-Graphic Business SME clinic in Takoradi in the Western Region,
the Group Head, Business Banking of Access Bank, Kafui Bimpe, said the bank had
so far supported SMEs in the country with GH¢50 million.
He said the loans were without
collateral.
The
SME Clinic, the third in a series, was on the theme: ‘Unlocking the potential
of SMEs through digitalisation’.
The
clinic has become a major platform created for SMEs to appreciate the need for
them to be steadfast to grow and create opportunities for themselves and the
economy as a whole.
“We have extended the tenure of
repayment for the SMEs when they have challenges, and also given moratorium to
others to be able to repay over a long term,” Mr Bimpe said.
He
added that the bank had also helped over 3,000 SMEs to hook on to digital
platforms in order to widen their reach.
Nature of SMEs
According
to him, a report by the World Bank showed that 90 per cent of businesses were
in the SME category, with over 50 per cent of employment created by them.
However,
he said about 20 per cent of them collapsed within a year of their start-up,
while 50 per cent of collapsed within the first five years, due to the lack of
funding support and technical expertise to run the businesses.
Also, Mr Bimpe said, the COVID-19 hit
SMEs hard, such that some were still grappling with the negative impact of the
pandemic.
“SMEs
are the motor of economic growth and an integral part of economic recovery.
“If
they are provided with the needed support in digital solutions and funding, it
will help them withstand the challenges they face,” he said.
Mr
Bimpe added that SMEs needed the right information to be able to take the right
decisions.
Job creation
An
economist and lecturer at the University of Ghana, Professor Godfred Bokpin,
said SMEs presented a huge opportunity to solve the unemployment problem in the
country.
“There
are challenges in every facet of life and it’s the same in managing businesses,
but there are more efficient ways of managing them.
“No matter the size of a business,
digital applications can be used to manage and expand that business,” he said.
Prof.
Bokpin said the future of money itself, for which SMEs were working, was
digitalisation and so digitalisation could not be overlooked.
Therefore,
he said, no matter the size of businesses, entrepreneurs should try to
understand how they could use digitalisation and digital applications (Apps) to
manage them.
“The
fact that you were born before computer does not necessarily mean that your
business should not embrace digitalisation and use it to grow,” he said.
Digital funding
During
a panel discussion, a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Business Studies,
Takoradi Technical University, Abigail Padi, said digitalisation offered an
opportunity for business people to seek crowd funding to grow their businesses.
She
said crowd funding was one of the key platforms in the country being used to
raise money for SMEs and was regulated by the Bank of Ghana.
“Digitalisation
has come to stay and so you need to leverage it to finance your businesses,”
she told the participants.
Source: Graphic.com.gh