AGI urges SMEs to merge
The Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) is pushing for the mergers among small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in a bid to make the country’s industrial sector more efficient.
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The association, argued that establishing a joint partnership among local and international companies would add value to goods produced in the country for export and reduce the financial burden on a single local firm.
The President of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), Mr James Asare-Adjei, said this to the GRAPHIC BUSINESS at a graduation ceremony in Accra.
He noted that many businesses in the country were struggling to survive, hence the need for them to consider partnering other companies to enable them to become more formidable.
According to him, it is important for an individual to own 10 per cent of a multimillion company than to be the sole owner of a GH¢1 miilion company.
He noted that the SME sector was key in the production of goods and services and employment creation in the country.
“As an entrepreneur, you must have a vision and stick to that vision since this will help you to identify opportunities and the problems around in order to make money,” he said.
He opined that typically, entrepreneurs constantly sought opportunities in their environment and go to the extent of creating a need and providing a solution in the form of a business.
“What I will like to emphasise on is the power of synergy which is beyond your individual brilliance and business acumen. It is also beyond what you have and what capital can do for you,” he said.
Business plan competition
But, the acting Country Director of Technoserve, Mr Samuel Baba Adongo, said unemployment has become an almost permanent economic canker that governments all over the world continue to wage war against with no meaningful success.
In Ghana, the growth in unemployment is worrisome especially in the wake of a seeming freeze in public sector employment.
However, the clear gap between population growth on one hand and industrial growth on the other hand is a factual issue to be address if the problem of unemployment comes to mind.
In the case of Ghana there have been several attempts of mostly Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO) and sometimes government in developing initiatives to provide financial support to start-up companies in order for them to expand so that they could employ others with the aim of reducing unemployment.
But, Mr Adongo said the concept of giving grants, in the form of cash, directly to beneficiaries had accounted for the reasons start-ups in the country never experience growth or expansion.
That, he said was because individuals who pose as potential entrepreneurs only make business out of the various entrepreneurship development initiatives in the country.
“These potential entrepreneurs move their business plans from one Business Plan Competition (BPC) to the other, instead of investing the grants received into their businesses,” he added.
However, no one has actually determined the impact of these BPCs on the entrepreneurship. This is however an area that needs to be critically looked at going forward as a country.
Even though, recently there has been an upsurge in the number of BPCs operating in the country, some of them have identified the activities of these entrepreneurs and have therefore developed mechanisms to correct that behaviour.