About 85,000 businesses in Ghana are still closed down due to the Coronavirus Pandemic.

This was featured in the Covid-19 Rapid Surveys Business Tracker Highlights by the Ghana Statistical Service.

In all 115,000 businesses have either permanently or temporarily closed down across the country.

The tracker also reveals that more than 45,000 workers lost their jobs during the partial lockdown – with those in the Accommodation and food sector badly hit.

So, more than half a million workers had their wages reduced.

Despite some respite granted businesses by government with the ¢600 million stimulus package, close to 131,000 businesses revealed they still had challenges accessing finance with over 60 per cent calling for subsidised interest rates.

The sample for the research were extracted from the Ghana Business Register, Non-farm establishments from Ghana Living Standards Survey and National Board for SMALL Scale Industries.

Data was collected between May 26 to June 17, 2020, with a targeted sample size of 4,248 businesses.