AGI spearheads establishment of industrial bank

Mr. Samuel Appenteng, National Vice President of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), on Friday said the association was spearheading the establishment of an Industrial Bank in the country.

He was speaking at the Business Development Workshop and the 9th Annual General Meeting of the Western and Central Regional branch of the AGI at Takoradi.

The theme for the function was “Identifying Opportunities, Processes and Removal of bottlenecks and challenges of outsourcing to local Ghanaian SMEs: the case of the Oil and Gas Industry in Ghana”.

Mr. Appenteng said establishing the bank was in its preparatory stage and a committee had been formed to work out the modalities.

He said the main focus of the bank would be to offer long term support to industry in order to make them competitive.

Mr. Appenteng said presently, the banks offer short term support to industry at high interest rate and this was making industry uncompetitive adding “Many companies cannot survive as a result of this”.

Mr. Alfred Ekow Gyan, the Deputy Western Regional Minister, AGI to organize continuous professional training for its members to enable them transact business with the country’s oil and gas industry.

He said the Association should also assist its members to partner with overseas companies to improve upon their capacity to embark on quality and large- scale production at a faster and cheaper cost.

He said SMEs could challenge themselves by strengthening their capacities through mergers, taking advantage of the economies of scale, introducing innovation into production, high caliber personnel, introducing best practices in ethics, improving negotiation skills and reducing the cost of production.

He said the government would create the enabling environment for businesses to thrive as a way of creating jobs and raising government revenue.

Source: GNA