Winneba, July 12, GNA - Mr Samuel Kofi Annor, Central Region Zonal Manager of the Ghana Co-operative Credit Union (GCCU), has said that the credit union concept has the required potentials to meet the credit needs of people running small-scale enterprises.

He said the co-operative credit union concept would ensure effective and sustained forward march of their businesses and advised small-scale entrepreneurs to embrace it.

Mr Annor was addressing members of small-scale business association operating in the Ajumako-Enyan-Essiam, and the Awutu-Effutu-Senya districts of the Central Region, at a forum organised by the Ghana Decent work Pilot Programme (GDWPP) at Winneba.

The event was organised under the auspices of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), initiator of the GDWPP, to review the work of the small-scale business associations that participated in the review forum.

Mr Annor said the formal financial institutions such as the banks had not done much to improve local investments, or made credit facilities available to the low and middle-income groups such as fitters, hairdressers, tailors, chop bar keepers and other small-scale business entities to promote their work.

He said about 90 per cent of the country's population lacked access to bank loans due to partly to high interest rates, security requirements and the high cost involved in monitoring small and medium size loans by the commercial banks.

Mr Annor said the credit union movement believed that informal economic operators were not poor materially as perceived by some people. Such people he said, were rather poor in knowledge because majority of them had not as yet realised the importance of credit unions and the enormous benefits that they could derive from them.

Mr Annor, however, maintained that following continuous education by leaders of the various unions a considerable number of people in both the formal and the informal sectors in the regions had now embraced the concept.

He announced that the Central Region branch of the Union had mobilised about 21,000 members with total savings of 54 billion cedis. Mr Annor said a total 40 billion cedis had been given to its members as loans, while its total assets stood at 68 billion cedis. He said out of the total loans disbursed, education had the highest percentage of 30, followed by small-scale business operators 25 per cent, housing 20 per cent, agriculture 15 per cent, while medical, funeral and other social activities also received five per cent.