Minister of Trade and Industry, Dr Kofi Konadu Apraku, on Thursday said poor planning and bad financial management by most local businesses was having a crippling effect on the government's golden age of business dream.

"More local business enterprises are in distress and are failing than those succeeding because they lack the ability to plan in order to maximise their productivity and profits.

"Even those succeeding are foreign investors or multi-national corporations," the Minister said, adding, "the situation where people acquire government and private loans and acquire a house or car instead of putting the money into the business must be stopped."

Dr Apraku was speaking at the opening of a three-day orientation workshop for 34 trainees recruited by the National Board for Small-Scale Industries (NBSSI) to manage 25 newly established Business Advisory Centres (BACs) in the districts of nine regions.

The Minister said government was prepared to provide all the essential ingredients for the individual businessman's success adding, "individuals work well when they work for themselves and government would not be an impediment but a facilitator for individuals to succeed."

He said the NBSSI had a critical role of ensuring the transformation into reality the dream of the golden age of business. Dr Apraku said the government sought to address the constraints through the easing of access to credit and the vigorous promotion of entrepreneurial and tailor-made managerial and skills training programmes to enhance the capacities of medium scale enterprises.

He said the Export Development Investment Fund had set aside money to assist the production of textile and garments, the President's Cassava/Starch Project, salt mining and agro-processing.

He said anyone into the production of any of these products qualified to receive assistance from the fund. He charged the NBSSI to assist in identifying enterprises with the potential to participate and provide training to enhance their managerial and entrepreneurial capacities.

The Minister further called on the NBSSI to help small-scale businesses to understand the mechanisms of business saying, "work with the local communities to identify products that qualify under the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and help them into it with proper planning mechanisms.

"This opportunity is unique, because while some countries are spending about 20 and 40 per cent on tariff for their exports products to enter into the American markets, we can enter free of duty and quota."

Nana Dr Baah Boakye, Executive Director of NBSSI, said the BACs had been established in all the regions to maintain close and permanent contact with entrepreneurs. He announced that the Board had mobilised one billion cedis through pledges made by the district assemblies that would be used to enhance the achievement of the goals of the districts in the area of poverty reduction and income and employment generation.

Nana Dr Boakye said the NBSSI was currently implementing an Entrepreneurship Development Programme by facilitating the creation of new businesses and also sustaining the growth of existing ones.