JOURNALISTS UP NORTH TO GIVE SUPPORT TO PSOs, FBOs, ETC

The Business Sector Advocacy Challenge (BUSAC) Fund, a donor funded project with the aim of improving the business environment in Ghana to facilitate private sector development and growth, has organized a day’s workshop for journalists in the Northern Region.

The objective of the workshop was to elicit the support of journalists or encourage them to seriously consider the numerous business challenges in the nation’s private sector and create awareness through effective and sustainable media reportage that would bring positive results to the sector in terms of growth and development either in a short, medium or long term.

The private sector which involves mostly Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and employs over 70% of the Ghanaian population is often referred to as the ‘engine of growth’ to every nation’s development economy.

However, numerous teething problems and challenges including difficulty in access to credit schemes, lack of or inadequate market availability, unfavourable government policies/local bye-laws, lack of infrastructure, high interest rates by financial institutions and among others, continue to hinder the development and expansion of the private sector in a country like Ghana.

Thus, recognizing the important role that the media plays in development advocacy, the organization urged practitioners to focus more attention on bringing out the challenges confronting the private sector by amplifying the voices of actors in that area in their frequent advocacy programmes.

Dennis Puorideme, Tamale Office Chief of BUSAC Fund responsible for the SADA operational areas in his remarks, said the Fund sought to build capacities of Private Sector Organisations (PSOs), Business Associations and Famer Based Organisations (FBOs) to enable them identify, analyse and research into business environment challenges and constraints which hinder their development and growth and bring them up for redress by the appropriate state agencies and institutions.

According to him, there is a need for serious advocacy for the private sector because there is a limited or no effective dialogue between the public sector and the business sector.

Besides, he said while majority of Ghanaians disregarded the private sector, the public sector also has limited understanding of the needs of the private sector. “The need for a strong private sector has been widely recognized as key to national development and growth; one of the vehicles for poverty reduction, and a key to removing constraints to doing business and increasing revenues, in Ghana and elsewhere can be achieved through advocacy”, Mr. Puorideme stressed.

Meanwhile, the BUSAC Fund setup in 2004 ended its first phase in February 2010. Three hundred and sixty-two (362) grants were provided to business groups and associations spread over all ten regions of Ghana to undertake advocacy activities aimed at improving the business environment.

A second phase of BUSAC Fund designed with lessons drawn from BUSAC phase I is being supported by DANIDA with other support coming from USAID and European Commission totalling US$20 million. The second phase also, is a five year extension to the first phase which lasted for six years, and is intended to consolidate the gains made in BUSAC Fund I and to further spread the concept and practice of advocacy to all sectors of the economy in all regions and districts of Ghana.

Emerging and established PSOs particularly in the area of business are eligible to apply to the Fund. These include business associations, trade unions, business media, small business associations of micro, small and medium enterprises, and FBOs. But, individuals and individual companies other than media houses are not eligible.