Accra, Aug. 23, GNA-The Ghana Enterprise Agency has begun national stakeholder engagement for the second phase of the COVID-19 Response Grant to provide liquidity and support to enable SMEs to adjust, and to grow out of the COVID-19 crisis in selected sectors of the economy.
The second phase of the programme under the Ghana Economic Transformation Project, with additional grant size of $5 million, would have a strong focus on Ghanaian export and export-oriented firms that fall within the small and medium enterprise category.
The project had in the first phase disbursed GHS28.7 million to more than 370 SMEs between September 2021 to March 2022 with 158 women-owned businesses as beneficiaries.
Beneficiaries of the GEA SME Grant programme have also created a minimum of 134 new permanent and 156 casual jobs within the period.
Mrs Kosi Yankey-Ayeh, the Chief Executive Officer of GEA, said the goal of the Grant programme was to ensure that businesses were resilience and ready to help transform the economy.
“I think the bottom line is to see resilience in businesses that have the potential to transform the economy and the nation and those who have the capability to actually create employment as well so that we can actually deal with some of the challenges of job creation,” she said after engagement of stakeholders in Accra.
She said the second phase intervention was targeting about 400 small, medium enterprises to give them support to sustain and grow their business.
The Ghana Enterprises Agency (GEA) – an agency under the Ministry of Trade and Industry, is one of the key Technical Implementing Agencies (TIAs) through which the World Bank Funded Ghana Economic Transformation Project (GETP) is deploying grants as part of government’s initiatives to promote private investments and firm growth in non-resource-based sectors.
