BUSAC Fund sets aside $20m for business advocacy

The Business Sector Advocacy Challenge (BUSAC) Fund has set aside $20 million to carry out business advocacy activities.

It is aimed at removing the bottlenecks associated with the business environment for the growth of businesses.

Mr. Dennis Puorideme, Head of the Tamale office of BUSAC Fund, said this during a one day sensitization workshop for journalists in Wa.

He said the project is currently being funded by DANIDA, USAID and the European Commission.

He said many businesses failed in the past and many people even refused to go into business because of the lack of an enabling environment for the growth of private businesses.

Giving an insight into the operations of the BUSAC Fund, Mr. Puorideme said it was a grant mechanism that allowed the Ghanaian private sector to advocate to the local, regional and national authorities for changes to the legal and regulatory frameworks that hindered private sector activities.

He said it was set up in 2004 to strengthen the advocacy capacity of private sector business groups and Associations and as at the end of the first phase, 362 grants had been provided to these business groups and associations.

Mr Puorideme said based on the success of the first phase of the project, a second phase had been designed to be implemented over the next five years spanning 2010 – 2014.

He said the second phase was aimed at improving the business environment in Ghana to facilitate private sector development and growth.

Mr. Puorideme said the northern sector did not benefit much from the first phase of the project, saying the second phase seeks to improve that situation.

This, he said, would be done through programmes that seek to build capacities of public sector organisations to identify, analyze and research into business environment challenges and constraints which hindered their development.

Source: GNA