Beige CEO commends Bank of Ghana
The Chief Executive Officer of BEIGE Capital, Mr Michael Nyinaku, has commended the Bank of Ghana (BoG) for setting up the Collateral Registry backed by an efficient lending system.
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“I think the setting up of the Collateral Registry at the Bank of Ghana is one of the laudable things that has happened to the financial and business sector in recent times” Mr Nyinaku said.
He was speaking at the maiden international conference on business management and entrepreneurial development organised by the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA).
The conference was on the theme: “Management of SMEs (small and medium enterprises): issues, challenges and opportunities.”
Mr Nyinaku added that with such database, government financing assistance to SMEs could also come in handy where the financial market had failed or become inaccessible.
“About 85 per cent of jobs in the country are being created by SMEs and they contribute 70 per cent to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product.
“When the SME sector is booming, other dependent industries such as management consulting, tax preparation, auditing, advertising and banking also thrive,” he added.
Mr Nyinaku also spoke about the high rates of borrowing for small businesses and advised upcoming firms to be circumspect, especially during the early years of their operations.
He noted that SMEs borrowed at exorbitant cost and were often dwarfed or crowded out by the government and big corporations in accessing funds, leading to many going to SME banking.
On dealing with some of the challenges facing SMEs, Mr Nyinaku proposed continuous business management capacity training for entrepreneurs to instil the knowledge and skills required to properly manage the businesses they had started.
He also noted that the lack of confidence in the ability of the SMEs to effectively manage their businesses so they could repay their loans was one of the reasons the financial institutions refused SMEs loans.
He suggested a coordination of all disjointed training programmes under a single umbrella where training programmes offered could include accounting, business management and preparation of business plans, financial statement analysis, personnel management and marketing.
The BEIGE Group CEO also suggested, “Government financing assistance to SMEs to be ideally managed by a political body that will administer the funds on purely merit and not on the grounds of any other criteria.”