The Bosomtwe Rural Bank, in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), has organised a seminar for clients of the bank who operate small and medium-scale businesses. It was to build their capacity for them to be efficient in their operations.
The seminar also sought to, among other things, equip the participants to acquire skills in adopting strategic planning methods to sustain their businesses, acquire effective and efficient management skills, as well as marketing strategies and financial management skills to facilitate, sustain and expand their operations.
About 40 selected small and medium-scale business operatives who did business with the Bosomtwe Rural Bank, benefited from the four-day business growth training seminar, which also sought to encourage the beneficiaries to adopt the best practices in managing their businesses.
Topics treated included the effective and efficient use of capital, raw materials, labour and administrative skills as well as marketing strategies.
The Project Manager, Mr Kofi A, Dankyi, said the seminar formed part of the poverty reduction strategy by the government to support the private sector in their quest to expand their businesses and generate the requisite income to support sustainable national development.
“The Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS II) 2006-2009 made private sector development a priority and identified micro finance and the provision of Business Development Support (BDS) service as key development tools,” he noted.
Mr Dankyi explained that since 2002, the UNDP Ghana had contributed significantly “ to enhance the capacity and competencies of microfinance institutions with the view to help Micro, Small and Medium Entrepreneurs (MSME), particularly those in the informal sector to access credit”.
He pointed out, that the training of the operational and managerial staff and board of directors in best practices in providing financial services on sustainable basis to clients, also formed part of their scheme of work.
He added that they were also keen in the “ provision of micro capital grants and the facilitation to access commercial loanable funds, so that the partner financial institutions could provide graduated and individual larger loan sizes to their MSME clients”
He said that managing the growth phase in many business entities was very challenging , because of that, the UNDP and the government had since 2006, “ turned attention to the clients of the financial institutions, providing them with business development support services and training in attitudinal change to business and entrepreneurship development”
That, he said ,would sharpen the managerial and functional competencies of business entities.
The Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bosomtwe Rural Bank, Mr Philip Bondah, urged the participants to translate the skills acquired during the seminar into productive ventures to enhance efficiency in their business operations.
He pointed out that the board would soon establish a monitoring team to evaluate their operations to determine the extent to which their businesses expanded or contracted.
He charged them to inject efficiency into their ventures to accelerate growth.
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