Agona Nyakrom (C/R), Dec 17, GNA - The Nyakrom Rural Bank has disbursed 754 million cedis to women groups to expand their businesses. The amount was released to the bank for disbursement by the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs as part of its efforts to reduce poverty among women in the Agona District.

Mr Bonney Abraham, Project Manager of the Bank, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview on Thursday, at Nyakrom said about 1,000 women had benefited from the package.

He said the bank had also disbursed 60 million cedis under the Poverty Alleviation Fund (PAF) to about 36 people. Mr Bonney described the loan recovery rate as "very encouraging" and asked the Ministry to disburse more funds through the Bank to cover more women to improve their living standard.

He said under the micro- finance credit facility, over 3.5 billon cedis had been disbursed to groups under the Women in Development and KWEJIS programmes, which are facilities of the Bank. Mr Bonney said about 1,000 women from 86 groups had befitted from the scheme.

The Project Manager said two facilities of the Bank the micro credit for churches and the payment of school fees had been re-launched. He stated that the products were meant to assist churches and parents to enable them to undertake development projects and to assist parents to educate their children.

Mr Bonney urged parents in the Agona, Awutu-Effutu-Senya, Ajumako and the Asikuma-Odoben Brakwa districts to take advantage of the packages to transact business with the Bank to lessen their burden especially for their children in secondary and tertiary institutions.