Association of Ghana Industries to offer consulting support to SMEs

In order to foster the small business segment in Ghana, the Association of Ghana Industries will now offer consulting support in the training and implementation domains to small and medium enterprises in the country. The new services will be offered in collaboration with local assemblies across Ghana.

Ghana ranks high among the most politically stable countries in Africa, and this stability is beginning to manifest itself through a number of public sector initiatives that have far-reaching and equitable economic benefits. In recent months, the Ghana Standards Authority launched a consulting practice to be run by retirees, generating the dual benefit of having a rich body of standards expertise to consult when required, and providing retirees with a channel for professional and financial fulfillment.

Now, the public sector has moved to help the small and medium businesses in the country, by offering it consulting services in collaboration with the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI). A collaborative initiative amongst the indigenous industries, AGI was established in 1957, and has evolved to incorporate 1,200 firms from nearly every economic segment, and works in the policy advocacy, trade facilitation and networking domains.

Local assemblies in Ghana will now work in collaboration with AGI to offer consulting support to smaller businesses in the country. Leveraging its vast repository of multifaceted expertise, AGI will help firms with the identification of key challenges, and will train them to devise solutions therein.

AGI is essentially looking to polish and refine Ghana’s economic environment, with the eventual goal of promoting it as an attractive trade partner in the global market. Training smaller organisations will help breed a cohesive atmosphere within the county’s business environment, while helping individual organisations with their development.

In addition, the arrangement with local governments will go a long way in eliminating some of the administrative barriers that smaller enterprises face, and may even generate added benefits in the form of revenue boosts and tax waivers.

Eastern Chairman at AGI, Dela Gadzanku said, “We envisage that such collaborations with local governments will ensure bottlenecks impeding SME development at the local level will be removed to enable the private sector to contribute meaningfully to assemblies’ internally generated funds and job creation programmes."

The SME sector in Ghana is particularly vibrant at the moment, which has not only prompted public sector support, but has also invited private initiatives to foster growth. Consulting firm The Next Organisation, for instance, offers a one-year training programme to entrepreneurs and leaders of small businesses to help develop their skills in strategy, management and commerce through the Ghana Business Star Growth Program.