John Kumah, NEIP CEO
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme (NEIP), John Kumah, has showered praises on President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for his foresightedness in introducing the programme.
NEIP, Mr Kumah believes, has aided many young people in the country to attain greater height in their businesses.
According to the NEIP CEO, the programme, within two years, has trained 19,000 and funded 4,350 people, adding that but for the President’s vision, all these people would have been walking around struggling with their businesses.
“In fact, this programme has helped majority of the youth to gather confidence to start their own businesses. The unemployment rate three years ago was about 15.3 per cent but I as I speak it has declined to 7.2 per cent. Had it not been the coronavirus pandemic, the unemployment rate could have come down again,” he said.
“The President has done very well, and so it will be better for Ghanaians to give him the mandate again to continue the outstanding work he is doing. I strongly believe that Ghanaians will look at the work he’s done so far, especially the youth, having assisted them with funds, and vote for him,” he told the media over the weekend.
Achievement
Listing some achievement of NEIP since he took over as CEO, Mr Kumah stated that the programme, which was initially called Youth Enterprise Support (YES), trained only 103 individuals and gave 66 financial supports to businesses throughout the eight years of the erstwhile NDC administration.
According to Mr Jumah, it had to take the intervention of the NPP to save the programme.
He disclosed that in its third year, the programme is training 26,000 individuals, and going to provide funds for 5,000 businesses, adding that his outfit is also training 100 beneficiaries from all the 260 administrative districts in the country.
He explained that the support given to the individuals are loans, and not free cash, as speculated, adding that beneficiaries are given a duration of 2-3 years maximum for repayment.
