Ghana’s Small and Medium sized business sector is set to receive a major boost as Societe Generale Ghana has signed a partnership agreement with the African Guarantee Fund to increase its financing support to SMEs through enhanced credit facilities.
The total guarantee facility of GHS35 million will enable the bank extend financial support to SMEs for which access to bank facilities is difficult.
Speaking at the signing event, Managing Director of Societe Generale Ghana, Hakim Ouzzani noted that the Facility will also enable the bank scale up lending to women and green businesses.
“Considering the significance of SMEs to the economic development of Ghana, it is only right that we provide them with the necessary support through increased access to financing. After the signing of a USD50m 5-year credit facility arrangement with the IFC in 2020, which was partially disbursed in 2020 to finance SMEs, the creation of the SG Ghana Home of Business in 2019 – providing free advisory services and capacity building to SMEs, the signing of a previous risk sharing facility in 2020, and the creation of the innovation hub in 2022 to support start-ups, our bank is building a comprehensive set of tools to support SMEs in Ghana. And the results are tangible: our SME book has more than doubled in 3 years!” he said.
AGF West Africa Managing Director, Bendjin Kpeglo, highlighted the reasons for partnering Societe Generale Ghana.
“We are excited to partner with Societe Generale Ghana, which is strongly committed to growing its SME lending strategy. AGF has issued several Loan Individual Guarantee facilities directly to enterprises within the hospitality and agribusiness sectors in Ghana, but through this Loan Portfolio Guarantee Facility, we will now support SME lending on a much larger scale, which will indeed drive the economic growth of the country.” he said.
“Through the AFAWA Guarantee for Growth Program launched by the African Development Bank and our Green Guarantee Facility we will enable the bank to scale up lending to women and green businesses respectively, which are among our priority areas as we work towards fostering financial inclusion and sustainable development.
“This partnership will ensure livelihoods and opportunities within Ghana’s economy continue to accelerate and our commitment is to closely support the bank to continue working with SMEs, to finance them to recover and thrive, and where necessary transform and adapt their businesses to the changing environment and seize new business opportunities.” he added.
