The Minister of Trade and Industry, Kobina, Tahir Hammond, has sworn-in a seven-member Ghana Enterprise Agency (GEA) micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) Grant Committee to oversee awards of grants under the World Bank-funded Ghana Economic Transformation Project (GETP) programme.
The GETP, implemented by GEA, is an initiative to promote private investments and support growth in non-resource-based sectors. That is, deployment of technical assistance and grants (for the most qualified businesses) outside the extractive oil and gas sectors.
The committee will have oversight over four technical assistance (TA) and grant programmes. The first of the four TA and grant programmes is called the SME High Growth Programme.
This is the flagship programme under the GETP targetting high-growth small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to support productivity and competitiveness-enhancing initiatives by such firms to accelerate their growth.
The second programme is dubbed the ‘Youth in MSME Programme’ – targetting MSMEs owned by young people between the ages of 18 to 35 years.
Third is the ‘Women MSME Programme’. This programme is exclusively for female-owned enterprises ranging from micro- to medium-sized firms.
The final TA and grant programme is called the ‘PWD Enterprise Support Programme’, and is set up only for MSMEs as well as startups owned by Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) or firms having most of their employees being PWDs.
The committee’s mandate is to grant final approval for grant recommendations submitted for their reviews, and to proffer reasons for rejecting any grant requests.
The committee’s inauguration and swearing-in was necessitated by dictates of the project implementation manual, which requires the committee to be set-up.
The minister tasked the committee to undertake their duties dispassionately, fairly and with an open mind.
The committee’s Chairperson thereafter expressed the members’ appreciation for the opportunity given them by the minister, and promised to work diligently to achieve the desired project development objectives of the GETP.
