Mr Boniface Abu-Bakar Saddique, Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, has restated the fact that small-scale enterprises were the bedrock of economic development.

This is because they played a crucial role in job creation, wealth generation, improvement in quality of life and socio-economic as well as political stability.

Mr Saddique was opening an exhibition of products mounted by the Ashanti Region branch of the ASSI as part of its week celebration in Kumasi on Thursday.

The Deputy Minister noted, however, that the micro and small-scale enterprises in the country were plagued with a myriad of problems and mentioned the lack of affordable long-term capital and inefficient technology as some of the problems.

Others he mentioned were lack of managerial and entrepreneurial skills, inadequate physical infrastructure, inadequate institutional support, customs and practices detrimental to women entrepreneurs, and poor interaction between the research institutions and small-scale operators.

He said government was committed to ensuring conducive playing field for hardworking entrepreneurs and that there were currently 25 government programmes in support of micro and small-scale enterprises development across the country.

Mr Saddique gave the assurance of government's continued support for the micro, small and medium enterprises at all times because it was the backbone of the country's industrialisation and economic growth programmes.

In a speech read on his behalf, Mr Sampson Kwaku Boafo, Ashanti Regional Minister, commended the initiative of the private sector, particularly in promoting investment and trade in Ashanti.

He noted that a major task facing the government now was unemployment, especially among the youth and the low returns from production activities and expressed the hope that with government's policy of promoting the private sector as the engine of growth, the unemployment situation would be minimised.

Mr Kwame Buor, Ashanti Regional Chairman of ASSI, enumerated some of the achievements of the association and said it had been able to scale down unemployment through the training of the youth in various vocations.

He, however, bemoaned the lack of financial support for small-scale entrepreneurs and called for support from the government for them to make the claim that the small-scale sector was the engine of economic growth a reality.