Eximguaranty, which guarantees credit for SMEs, will be better placed to support them if it becomes a fully-fledged bank, its Managing Director, Zac Bentum has said, urging shareholders to consider same.

Shareholders of Exim include Financial Investment Trust (FIT), Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), National Investment Bank (NIB), Ecobank, and the Ministry of Finance.

Mr. Bentum sees a financing gap despite Exim guaranteeing for SMEs more than GH¢300 million in credit as at September 2014.

Speaking to the B&FT on the sidelines of a workshop organised for financial institutions by Exim, Mr. Bentum said banks generally lack the understanding of how SMEs operate -- a situation that he said makes access to credit difficult.

Exim has been in operation for the past 20 years and works by enhancing the capacity of SMEs and exporters to access credit from lending institutions.

“What we have realised is that patronage from the banks is still very low -- it is just about 20 percent and we want to improve on that. This has come because of some of the challenges the banks face with the SME industry

“It is basically due to lack of understanding of that industry, and as we meet and discuss some of these challenges we will all be on the same platform to be able to help our SMEs -- which form about 70-76 percent of registered businesses in the country,” he said.

The meeting with financial institutions, according to Mr. Bentum, afforded Exim the opportunity to discuss some of the challenges the banks face in accessing its services for the benefit of the SME industry.

The workshop was on the theme “20 years of guaranteeing credit for SME Ghana: Repositioning Exim as a critical partner in financial intermediation for national development”.

Twenty-one representatives from various financial institutions including Access Bank, Ecobank, NIB, Barclays Bank, Stanbic, Fidelity Bank, Royal bank, Sahel Sahara bank, UT Bank, Zenith bank, Unibank, Prudential Bank among others attended the workshop.

Exim was established primarily to provide banks and other financial institutions appropriate financial solutions -- in the form of credit guarantees for the benefit of SMEs engaged in the agricultural, export, manufacturing, services and construction sectors of the Ghanaian economy.

Exim is a member of the Association of Africa Development Finance Institutions (AADFI) and is currently rated the 6th-Best Development Finance Institution in Africa.