Lifeline for Volta Star Textile company
The Volta Star Textile Limited at Juapong in the Volta Region has been offered a credit facility of GH¢6million by the Export Development and Agricultural Investment Fund (EDAIF) to reactivate its operations.
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The company is expected to use part of the money to pay salaries and electricity bills which have been in arrears.
The company that has suffered some setbacks in its operations was locked up to management by the workers who also blockaded the gate to the factory over three months ago as a sign of protest over the non-payment of their salaries and wages for 10 months.
Meeting
The Minister of Trade and Industry, Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, announced this when he visited the factory and met separately with management and workers as part of a working tour to industrial establishments in the Volta Region.
He said the factory was the largest government investment in the region for which reason the ministry was concerned about the challenges mitigating against its successful operations.
Strategic investors
He said the government had decided that all state-owned enterprises should look for strategic investors to inject fresh capital, introduce modern technology and also employ good management teams to run those organisations.
According to the minister, the Volta Star Textile Limited had been identified as one of the enterprises that could partner strategic investors to enhance its operations.
On the resuscitation of the company, Mr Spio-Garbrah called for its auditing to flush out ghost names and said efforts would also be made to put in place a good management team to forestall the recurrence of such problems.
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A board member of the company, Togbe Mankralo Agbohla VI, said the company could not generate enough funds to settle its bills and that expenditure was far above income.
He further alleged that there had been a theft of some of the raw materials of the company during the closure period.
EDAIF interventions
The Volta Regional officer of EDAIF, Salifu Ali, said a total of GH¢ 766.4 million had been disbursed into more than 1100 projects in different parts of the country since 2002.
He mentioned that the projects included mango plantations in the northern sector of the country, cassava cultivation and the graduate enterprise development initiative.
Mr Ali said the credits were administered at relatively low interest rate of 12.5 per cent, lower than what the traditional banks offered to their customers.
The Volta Regional Project Officer of the National Board for Small-Scale Enterprises (NBSSI), Limann Narambah, said 147 new jobs were created by 207 enterprises.