John Kumah, NEIP CEO
About 26,500 young entrepreneurs, nationwide, have received skills training to enable them manage their businesses effectively post-COIVD-19.
This is to afford the young entrepreneurs the opportunity to help build their respective local economies as part of measures in bringing to fruition the government’s Ghana Beyond Aid agenda.
The training, which is under the Window 3 of the Presidential Business Support programme, witnessed beneficiaries receiving funding support to cushion them in their respective ventures.
The beneficiaries were trained according to their areas of interest, namely agribusiness, food and beverage, production and manufacturing, tourism, sport and recreation as well as in fashion, clothing and accessories.
Beneficiaries and repayment
Speaking at one of the events, the Chief Executive of the National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme (NEIP), John Kumah, said that about 19,000 businesses and entrepreneurs had been trained in the first two series of the initiative.
He further revealed that about 4,350 also received funding after the training. The beneficiaries received between GHC10, 000 and GHC100, 000, relative to their business proposals and needs.
“The impact of the Presidential Business Support programme, nationwide, has been huge in terms of sustainable jobs that are being created and the contribution to the GDP growth,” he said.
“Despite these successes, we believe that greater impact can also be achieved by going down to the grassroots in the rural and peri-urban communities that have not really benefitted from the first two windows of the progamme,” he added.
Mr Kumah noted that the funds that are recovered are usually reloaded back into the system for other cohorts of the next batches to benefit.
According to him, there is the need to enforce the culture of repayment into young entrepreneurs because it builds their capacity to spend within their budget.
He further noted that the NEIP has decentralised the process for individuals in rural Ghana, adding that letters had been sent to every local assembly to enable all interested entrepreneurs access the application and training process.
He explained that anyone who applies qualifies for training, and these are done by partners and hubs who have the qualifications to do the trainings.
He added that the partners and hubs select top 10 businesses from the lot and are sent to the NEIP office for monitoring, evaluation and confirmation. All interested persons are encouraged to apply on the official website of the NEIP, www.neip.gov.gh or @neipGhana on all social media platforms for more information.
Intent
Additionally, Mr Kumah told the participants that apart from empowering them, the programme is also aimed at creating about 50,000 job opportunities under the first term of the Akufo-Addo government.
“It is to promote rural income generation through grassroots participation in industrial and commercial activities, to promote import substitution for currency stability, increase local production and generation for a wide range of producers and to provide the necessary incentives to increase yield of domestic output,” the NEIP boss said.
To this end, he encouraged all participants to take the training serious in order to build their business to have impact on their respective communities.
Window 3
Under the third phase of the programme, which ran for a month (June 10 to July 31, 2020), there were more women participation than men. The women made up 51 per cent of applicants while there was 49 per cent male representation.
The beneficiaries were trained in five areas, namely identifying local business opportunities, business management, business model canvas, branding and marketing as well as simple bookkeeping and financial management.
For the regional breakdown, the Ashanti Region recorded the highest number of participants of 4,200; followed by the Greater Accra Region with 2,900 participants; Easter Region had 2,800; Volta/Oti, 2,600; Northern Region, 2,400; Central Region, 2,200; Western/Western North, 2,300; Upper East Region recorded 1,400 beneficiaries; Bono, 1,200; Bono East, 1,100; Ahafo recorded 800; while Savannah and North East regions recorded 700 applicants respectively.
The Presidential Business Support Programme (PBSP) is an initiative of NEIP, under the Ministry of Business Development.
It is aimed at assisting Ghanaian businesses with business advisory services and funding to scale up and to create jobs.
