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Ghana: Boost for Small Scale Industries As Gov't Provides Incentives for Private Businesses
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Ghanaian Chronicle (Accra)
21 July 2008
Posted to the web 22 July 2008
The Ministry of Trade and Industry, Private Sector Development and President's Special Initiatives, has announced plans, aimed at providing incentives for private small scale businesses and industries, to enable them contribute meaningfully to the socio-economic development of the country.
Mr. Kwaku Agyemang Manu, Deputy for Trade, Industry, PSD, PSI, who disclosed this in Kumasi, at a workshop organized for participants from the Ghana National Association of Garages (GNAG), and the Kumasi Central Market, said as a preliminary measure, the ministry was collaborating with the leading waste management company in Ghana, Zoomlion, to embark on intensive sanitation programmes, aimed at providing the needed healthy and decent environment, for people engaged in small scale businesses and industries, to embark on their activities.
Dubbed "Support for Local Industries and Markets," the minister noted that the programme hoped to provide beneficiaries, the needed opportunity to conduct their various businesses, in a more decent and waste free environment, through constant cleaning and desilting of gutters, to prevent environmentally borne diseases, while also ensuring the provision of roads and other infrastructures, needed to facilitate their operations.
He said the programme, amongst other things, was the product of the trade sector support and implementation project, launched by the ministry three years ago, to help sustain local businesses and provide them with logistic and technical support.
The Minster, who earlier on paid a familiarization visit to the Suame Magazine, to acquaint himself with activities of artisans and auto mechanics, expressed his amazement at the quality of industrial activities going on there, and expressed the optimism that with the needed financial and logistic support, workers at Suame Magazine would be able to offer solutions to the country's quest for a middle income and self-reliant economy.
Among the places the Trade and Industry Minister visited, included workshops where basic cast irons are used to produce standard tanks, sites where bodies of coaches and other long vehicles are manufactured, and the Suame magazine foundry, which he said would soon be revitalized with funds from the Japanese International Co-operation Agency (JICA).
He said the government was in talks with the major financial institutions in the country, for the acquisition of funds, which would be channeled to support artisans, to enable them acquire the needed requisite technical skills in Information Communication Technology, and also enter into partnership with the country's universities, and other institutions of higher learning, in order to upgrade their knowledge and skills.
The Ashanti Regional Chairman of the GNAG, Nana Oppong, proposed the setting up of a special scholarship scheme for young apprentices, who come to acquire skills and training at Magazine.
According to him, even though the Suame Magazine continued to offer job security for a lot of young people, who otherwise could have become street children, it has over the years been neglected by successive governments, adding that every year, not less than 100 young people, who could not afford to further their education, turn to the Magazine as an ideal place to learn a profession.
He further appealed to the government, to address the issue of lack of accessible roads, and also extend credit facilities to them, so that they can expand their businesses.
The Project Coordinator of Zoomlion Ghana Limited, Mad. Freda Prempeh, noted that with the company committed to ensuring a waste free environment for all Ghanaians, it hoped to offer quality services, to ensure the sustenance of the programme.
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She, therefore, called on stakeholders, including the business sectors, which fall under the programme, to co-operate with the company, to ensure the successful implementation of the programme.
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