Accra, Oct. 4, GNA - Nana Dr Baah Boakye, Executive Director of the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI), on Tuesday called on the Government to put more money into the development of Small and Medium Scale Enterprise (SMEs) to make them competitive. He said though the Government funded the NBSSI to carry out its activities, the money voted to the sector was not enough and there was the need to improve on this to empower it to carry out its mandate. Speaking at the Media Dialogue to promote small scale business concerns, Dr Boakye said 380 million cedis was given out as loans to SMEs this year with a payment rate of 86 per cent and interest rate of 20 per cent in lieu of collateral.

He said this amount was inadequate taking into consideration the number of SMEs.

Organised by the Ghana Journalists Association, the Media Dialogue, dubbed "Strategies, Impact and Challenges of NBSSI in the Promotion of SMEs" sought to use the media to promote small-scale business concerns. It was facilitated by KAB Governance Consult and sponsored by the Business Sector Advocacy Challenge (BUSAC) Fund.

Dr Boakye said inadequate budgetary allocation for administration, service and investment activities, logistics to reach out to every district and inadequate funds for building the capacity of staff in enterprise development were some major constraints facing the Board. "The Board for the year 2006 and beyond is positioning itself to play the role of a facilitator more than an implementer since this would enable the Board to achieve improved sustainability.=94 He said the Board was focusing its activities in identifying the needs of SMEs in the districts and linking SMEs to business support service providers.

In 2005, the services of the Board created 900 new businesses in the districts helped 13 apprentices, who completed their training, to establish their own businesses and formalised the registration of 142 businesses with the Registrar-General's Department. Dr Boakye called on the SMEs to ensure customer care, use the banking facilities available and improve their technology to make them competitive saying the NBSSI was always available to help in all concerns.

He said the NBSSI was an apex governmental body for the promotion and development of SMEs adding that it had Business Advisory Centres (BACs) in 102 out of the 138 district capitals to provide counselling for the SMEs.

Mr Kwesi Afriyie Badu, Chief Executive of KAB Governance Consult, called for a meeting between the NBSSI and the SMEs twice in a year to dialogue, make strategic inputs into Government policies and review their activities periodically to enhance their business. 4 Oct. 06