Accra, Feb. 28, GNA- National Board for Small Scale Industries says it has signed a 10 billion cedi deal with the Micro Finance and small Loan Centre MASLOC for on lending to small medium scale enterprises in the country.

The disbursement of the fund, which is demand driven, would commence in March this year and it is expected to benefit businesses in the manufacturing and services sectors.

Beneficiary companies could access between 20 million to 200 million cedis.

Nana Dr Baah Boakye Executive Director of NBSSI disclosed this during a visit to the stands of some SMEs exhibiting at the 11th Ghana International Trade fair ongoing in Accra. NBSSI is sponsoring 18 SMEs dealing in artifacts, textiles, handicrafts from the 10 regions to participate in the fair. Nana Boakye said NBSSI was involved in training of the managers of the SMEs in record keeping, preparation of business plans, among other managerial issues to enable them to access credit from the banks. Other areas of assistance include packaging and training as well as marketing.

Nana Boakye said apart from the MASLOC loan the NBSSI operated its own revolving credit scheme, which initially started with a seed fund of 80 million cedis, but had now reached 600 million cedis. Another source of fund that SMEs could access is PAMSCAD which had 780 million cedis accruing to it currently.

On the recovery of loans granted to beneficiaries, Nana Boakye said it was about 78.5 per cent for the revolving fund and 88.5 per cent for laons granted under the PAMSCAD.

He said the NBSSI had made tremendous improvement since 1985 and had helped grow businesses.

Nana Boakye said a major challenge facing NBSSI was unavaialability of resources to enable it to spread its activities to the 138 districts in the country.

Currently, NBSSI operates in 110 districts. High staff turnover, lack of Infrastructure and improve technologies are other challenges facing the NBSSI. Mr Dawarnoba Baeka, Director, Policy Planning Monitoring and Evaluation said in order to improve on access to credit for SMEs, the NBSSI had compiled a comprehensive directory of various sources of funds at both national and district levels to enable them to access credit. 28 Feb. 07