The Business Development Ministry has justified spending GHS100 million on capacity building of some Ghanaian entrepreneurs within two years.
The sector Minister at a press meeting on Tuesday, August 13 said the ministry for the past two years implemented a number of initiatives which include the presidential pitch, business development, capacity building for women and disabled entrepreneurs.
According to the Minister, the government is ready to spend more to build the capacity of young entrepreneurs.
Speaking on Citi FM in justification of the spending by the Ministry, the sector Minister Dr Ibrahim Mohammed Awal said one of the surest ways to eradicate youth unemployment is through entrepreneurship.
"The issue of young unemployment is a big challenge to every government in Africa and around the world and the President has noted that one solid way of solving youth unemployment is through entrepreneurship, in line with this we've made a lot of programmes to boost entrepreneurship, we have five initiatives that have engaged us to solve youth unemployment, the first one is that last year we trained 7,000 young people to build their capacity in business and expanded 1,350 of them, minimum of GHS10,000 and a maximum of GHS 100, 000 per person at 10% per annum and that has helped us to create a lot of jobs, this year we've trained 12,000 and we've funded 3,000 of them, the criteria of funding of the Ministry is also to be able to employ a minimum of three persons that's how come we have created over 4,000 jobs in the last one year, secondly physically challenged persons in this country constitute 5% of the population...........most of them have limited access to financial assistance, we are targeting to support 1,000 disabled women entrepreneurs in this country, we've done 100 already...."
Dr Ibrahim Mohammed Awal said the aim of the government is to change the mentality of the youth from job seekers to job creators, and also give women the opportunity to be innovative and have businesses of their own.
He added that this will enable young people and women who do not have access to funding to do so.
Responding to the question of fund recovery yet to be made by the country from the investment, the sector minister said, "The recovery rate is at 70% as at now we intend to recover not less done 90% and we intend to create 120,000 jobs over the next five years..."
He concluded that those who have gone in for loans will pay with 10% interest per annum.
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