The Executive Director of the National Board for Small Scale Industries, NBSSI, Kosi Yankey, has explained that financial institutions will be used to disburse the 600 million cedis stimulus package allocated to support small and medium scale enterprises.
Following the negative impact of COVID-19 on businesses and individuals, the amount has been set aside by government to mitigate the impact on small and medium scale enterprises.
However, there had been suggestions by some stakeholders that financial institutions were in a better position to disburse and recover the monies than the NBSSSI.
Reacting to these concerns, the Executive Director of the NBSSI, clarified that financial institutions will actually be engaged to disburse the funds.
“I think that nobody ever said it wasn’t going through financial institutions. It is important for us to look at this holistically and realize that when you have a situation like this, we can’t look at individualistic views based on our interest. We need to look at it holistically. First of all NBSSI is not disbursing directly. It is going through the financial institutions. So, the financial institutions are involved; it is important. We are working with the ARB APEX Bank because they also have rural banks across the nation. So the disbursement and the analysis of the loan process will be done by the financial institutions,” she said.
She added that the modalities for applying for the funds have been activated through an electronic portal that will assess the impact of COVID-19 on businesses.
“It is up to the businesses or the enterprises to highlight and show what it is, and how they have been impacted. I think its clear most people have been impacted so some based on their financials you can look at it in terms of even their bank statements. If you even juxtapose 6 months from when COVID began or in this period you will be able to tell that this business has been greatly impacted. So those are some of the things we would utilize,” she added.
