Five Ghanaian Small Medium Enterprises (SME) have received a GH₵1 million financial support as beneficiaries from a pilot phase of SME Growth and Opportunity (GO) programme.

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo presented a dummy cheque to the beneficiaries at the launch of the 8.2 billion intervention programme for SMEs.

They include Tevonwa Limited, a rice processing firm; Tilaa Limited, a honey producer; Abubakar Mahama Limited, a Sheanut processing firm; Payne Payne and Hopkins, a fish processing and packaging firm and AA Food and Beverages Limited, a liquor producer.

The Government, through the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Trade and Industry developed the programme with the objective of providing targeted financing solutions and technical assistance to support SME to expand and create jobs.

Dr. Ernest Addison, Governor of the Central Bank of Ghana, said the Bank was working to keep inflation in check to allow SMEs to have access to loans with lower interest rates.

“When inflation declines to comfortable levels and interest rates begin to decline, demand and supply for SME loans will pick up and be a key driving force supporting growth,” he said.

He also disclosed that the Bank had commissioned a study in collaboration with the Development Bank of Ghana and the University of Ghana Business School to better understand the constraints of SMEs to formulate targeted policies to ensure growth.

“The objective of the study is among others, to ascertain the economy’s SME credit demand needs, the supply of liquidity by these SME and how fintech can be leveraged to scale up lending by the SMEs,” he said.

The implementing agencies for the SME GO programme are the GEA, Ghana Exim Bank and the Development Bank Ghana/International Finance Corporation.