Cape Coast, Dec. 15, GNA - Deputy Minister of Trade Industry, Private Sector Development and PSI, Mrs Gifty Ohene-Konadu, on Thursday called on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMES) to access the appropriate Micro-Finance and Small Loan Schemes (MASLOC) to enhance their businesses.

She said the scheme, which was launched by President John Agyekum Kufuor recently, would be operational in January next year, so they must form cooperatives to enable them to access it.

Mrs Ohene-Konadu made the call during a day's dialogue for media and small-scale enterprises at Cape Coast under the theme: 93Using the media to promote small business concerns=94.

She said 460 billion cedis with an interest rate of 10 percent was available under the MASLOC and tasked them to take advantage of the low interest rate and access it.

The deputy Minister said qualified economic officers would be deployed in all districts to manage the scheme and expressed the hope that this would make it easier for SMEs in the rural areas to access the loan and prevent the money from getting into wrong hands. She said SMEs account for about 70 percent of all industries established in the economy and 85 percent of manufacturing employment in the country.

Mrs Ohene-Konadu said in view of this, an SME directorate had been established at the Ministry to provide strategic policy direction and guidance for the development of the sector. She noted that lack of credit facilities, as well as managerial skills and land, were major problems facing SMEs and that the Ministry had initiated interventions under the National Trade policy to address the situation.

Mrs Ohene-Konadu said so far a 20 million-dollar loan had been sourced as a long term funding to banks for on-lending to SMEs for between five and seven years. In addition, a 10-million Euro Italian fund has also been secured for SMEs to procure machinery and equipment and that a new venture capital fund of more than 22 million dollars was also available for them.

Mrs Ohene-Konadu said apart from the loans, provision were also made for SMEs to have market linkages for their goods, adding that three export trade houses, specialized in export marketing had been established to act as brokers between SMEs and selected external markets.

Mr Bright Blewu, General Secretary of Ghana Journalists' Association, said giving financial and logistical support to SMEs would help solve the problem of unemployment and also reduce poverty. He urged the SMEs to patronize all the programmes in the national trade policy to improve their businesses. Mr Kwasi Afriyie Badu, Chief Executive Officer of KAB Governance Consult, stressed the need to educate the public on the MASLOC to enable more people to access it. He advised that the disbursement of the loan should not be politicized and called on the management of the scheme to be transparent and fair in their dealings with the beneficiaries.