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NBSSI seeks
loans to support small scale enterprises
Accra, Feb. 28, GNA- National Board for Small Scale
Industries says it has signed a 10 billion cedi deal with
the Micro Finance and small Loan Centre MASLOC for on
lending to small medium scale enterprises in the country.
The disbursement of the fund, which is demand driven, would
commence in March this year and it is expected to benefit
businesses in the manufacturing and services sectors.
Beneficiary companies could access between 20 million to 200
million cedis.
Nana Dr Baah Boakye Executive Director of NBSSI disclosed
this during a visit to the stands of some SMEs exhibiting at
the 11th Ghana International Trade fair ongoing in Accra.
NBSSI is sponsoring 18 SMEs dealing in artifacts, textiles,
handicrafts from the 10 regions to participate in the fair.
Nana Boakye said NBSSI was involved in training of the
managers of the SMEs in record keeping, preparation of
business plans, among other managerial issues to enable them
to access credit from the banks.
Other areas of assistance include packaging and training as
well as marketing.
Nana Boakye said apart from the MASLOC loan the NBSSI
operated its own revolving credit scheme, which initially
started with a seed fund of 80 million cedis, but had now
reached 600 million cedis.
Another source of fund that SMEs could access is PAMSCAD
which had 780 million cedis accruing to it currently.
On the recovery of loans granted to beneficiaries, Nana
Boakye said it was about 78.5 per cent for the revolving
fund and 88.5 per cent for laons granted under the PAMSCAD.
He said the NBSSI had made tremendous improvement since 1985
and had helped grow businesses.
Nana Boakye said a major challenge facing NBSSI was
unavaialability of resources to enable it to spread its
activities to the 138 districts in the country.
Currently, NBSSI operates in 110 districts.
High staff turnover, lack of Infrastructure and improve
technologies are other challenges facing the NBSSI.
Mr Dawarnoba Baeka, Director, Policy Planning Monitoring and
Evaluation said in order to improve on access to credit for
SMEs, the NBSSI had compiled a comprehensive directory of
various sources of funds at both national and district
levels to enable them to access credit.
GNA
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