Barclays Bank Ghana provides support to small-medium scale enterprises

Barclays Bank Ghana is providing support to small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) who have enrolled with Invest in Africa (IIA) credit support to expand their businesses.

This is as a result of a partnership established between the bank and IIA. The bank is also expected to provide other forms of assistance to enhance the development of the enterprise.

Although the IIA is a non-profit organisation, its vision is to create a prosperous African economy hence has aided over $1million credit support to SMEs through its 'Access-to-Finance' benefit offering.

According to a statement released last Friday, November 17, 2018, IIA Ghana's Country Director, Mr Clarence Nartey, voiced out his glee at the partnership with Barclays and how it will result in more funds being made available to support the growth of SMEs.

"The benefits to our SMEs are enormous. These include; access to world-class business advisory services, short-term loans, supply chain financing and project financing at competitive rates. This should enable them grow their businesses and create more jobs in the economy," Mr Nartey said

In the statement, Mr Nartey said, “the partnership was very strategic because Barclays' Enterprise Supply Development (ESD) programme had similar objectives as IIA's three-prong benefit offerings.”

Business opportunities valued at $150 million has been provided by the IIA's 'Access-to-Markets' pillar Ghanaian SMEs through its online marketplace platform the called the African Partner Pool (APP).

IIA's 'Access-to-Skills' pillar, has also endowed about 230 SMEs in a suite of training programmes, which has improved the entrepreneurial, managerial and technical competencies of the people.