Accra, Jan. 31, GNA - Tradeline Consult (TLC), Ghana, a registered liability company, aims to create 1,000 jobs in three years for degree and diploma holders as well as school leavers with the potential to develop their entrepreneurial skills and competencies.

This was made known during the TLC’s second in the series of Business Seminars for Small and Medium Scale Enterprises in Accra, which highlighted the significance of goal-setting with a practical demonstration, which challenged the businessmen and women in attendance to set personal and business goals in order to grow their businesses.

Mr Sam Zeph Atiemo, Lead Partner of TLCt, who took the participants through the basics of goal-setting on the theme: Goal Setting for Business Growth said it was the key obstacle to business development and growth in Ghana.

He noted that setting personal and business goals enhance the growth of the business as well as the quality of service and products delivered by the business.

“The essence of setting goals is to have a sense of fulfilment and achievement. It helps you to increase production and quality of service with a sense of urgency. One of the greatest drawbacks of a business without set goals is procrastination due to fear,” he said.

Underscoring the importance of goal setting, Mr Atiemo said: “Fear prevents us from setting goals,” and urged the participants not to “set goals for other people but for yourselves and your businesses as this is a display of the fear of goal-setting. Be clear with yourself and everything that you want to achieve in life will be made possible,” he said.

As a concrete example of goal setting and the clarity it brought to businesses, groups and individuals, Mr Atiemo outlined TLC’s goals for the next three years as the desire to reach out to 10,000 SMEs; create jobs for 1,000 young graduates with degrees and diplomas as well as school leavers with business development potential and create 10 Regional SME Associations.

In addition, Tradeline intends to graduate 30 per cent of its clients from micro to small scale enterprises; 20 per cent of clients into medium scale enterprises; 10 per cent of clients into large scale business enterprises with a further goal to provide training to 1,000 professionals in diverse business sectors of the economy.

A total of 35 participants benefitted from the training, which also had a consultant, Mr Eric Agyare, of SNV (Netherlands Developments Organisation) as a resource person to talk about available funds from the Business Development Services Fund (BDSF), which provides matching grants to qualified businesses for growth and service improvement.

Mr Agyare explained that the BDSF is a business assistance fund set up by Government with support from the World Bank with three windows of support opened to clients seeking support - micro, small and medium scale enterprises.

The fund, according to Mr Agyare, has a total outlay of $2,800,000 to disburse over its lifetime.

Mr Agyare said only few businesses could access the facility due to the challenge of mobilising the 50 per cent matching fund requirement.

To qualify, Mr Agyare said “a business must have wider impact on employment generation and skills training for members of the community”.

Additionally, he said individuals and business entities that had difficulty raising the required 50 per cent could form business groups to access funding by pooling their resources together.

TLC therefore intends to facilitate access to funds by leveraging the partnership with SNV and BDSF for the growth and development of its clients.

Other areas of training covered during the seminar were - Importance of goal-setting; Common mistakes of goal-setting and Principles of goal-setting.

The participants, many of whom had never been privileged to attend any business development training were grateful to TLC and urged the organisers to continue with the programme and open it up for potential business entrepreneurs and unemployed youth in the other regions.

TLC which is based in Ghana and Malawi provide services to SMEs in Business Planning/Business Plan Development, Strategic Planning, Financial Management, Training in Customer Care, Sales and Marketing, Agribusiness and Entrepreneurship, Business and Management Coaching, Motivational Business Seminars and Feasibility Studies.