Deputy Chief Executive, The Development Bank Ghana (DBG) Michael Mensah-Baah, has announced that there is a plan to make 500 women-led businesses become beneficiaries of the GH₵1 billion fund expected to be deployed to support Small Scale Enterprises (SMEs).
He said the bank remains committed to supporting the growth and development of women entrepreneurs in the country.
Michael Mensah-Baah disclosed this at the Investment Climate Reform (ICR) Facility – Development Bank Ghana Stakeholder Workshop.
He said DBG has collaborated with relevant stakeholders and like-minded financial institutions to make this ambition materialise in the next three to five years.
“DBG is a wholesale lending institution, that is, we lend to other financial institutions so we need to have partners who are like-minded like us, who will work with us, and who share this same ambition of being able to support women-led businesses,” he said on Wednesday while interacting with journalists.
He lamented the current disparity in access to finance, adding that although 50 percent of businesses in Ghana are owned by women, only 10 percent of these businesses can access funding.
The workshop he noted was organised to serve as a platform to identify and address the barriers preventing women entrepreneurs from tapping into available financial resources.
“The issue we have discovered is that women who are available to receive this funding still struggle to get funding and we needed to have this workshop to understand some of the barriers that prevent them from accessing the funding.
“This is because even though the funding is available and the women are unable to access it, we won’t achieve our ambition of providing long-term capital for these women,” he stated.
He added that the bank will not only provide financial support but will also offer capacity-building and technical assistance to empower women-led businesses.
The workshop he stressed would support women-led businesses, facilitate their growth, and transform their businesses from micro-enterprises into large corporate entities in Ghana.
By: Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana
