Accra, Sept. 13 GNA - Mrs Stephanie Baeta Ansah, Managing Director of HFC Bank Ghana Limited on Monday called on accounting professionals to help polish up helpless businessmen, who have the ambition and the desire to be prosperous but were not receiving good advice. She said many businesses were failing because of insufficient capital, poor inventory management, over investment in fixed assets, poor credit management and the personal use of business funds at the expense of working capital.

Mrs Baeta Ansah, whose speech was read by Mr Asare Akuffo, Deputy Managing Director of HFC Bank Limited was speaking at the 2004 Professional Week Celebration of the Institute of Professional Studies (IPS) at Legon, near Accra. The week is on the theme: "The professional - The agent of growth for entrepreneurial development".

Mrs Baeta Ansah also announced that the HFC Bank and some other banks in the country were establishing Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) units to nurture small businesses with the potential for growth so as to provide them with management and financial consultants. She said it was expected that as those businesses grow they would employ professionals to help them consolidate the gains that they made. Mrs. Baeta Ansah said small businesses in the informal sector should be encouraged and drawn into the formal sector to take advantage of various micro- finance institutions to expand their operations. She said the training of professionals must be of the highest standards and in tune with the needs of industries.

Their practices should be geared towards helping their client's businesses to grow rather than giving them laid-back services. The Reverend Father John M. Martey, Director of IPS said the IPS, as a professional institution needed to offer professional knowledge support to the promotion of entrepreneurial ideas for the achievement of successes. He also called for research into the activities of businesses owned by and ran by entrepreneurs, especially those that needed to have insight into what markets, products or services that should be strengthened. Research should provide information on what new products or markets entrepreneurs needed to move into growth and development.