JOURNALISTS URGED TO PROMOTE SMALL BUSINESSES (PAGE 55, NOV 19)

THE President of the Ghana Journalists Association, Mr Ransford Tetteh, has urged the members of the Journalists for Business Advocacy (JBA) to create the platform for journalists to promote small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs).
He said the business advocacy would provide the platform for the media to make a contribution to wealth creation, poverty alleviation and national development.
Mr Tetteh, who is also the Editor of the Daily Graphic, made the appeal at the launch of the JBA in Accra yesterday.
The JBA was established out of GJA’s special two-year project dubbed “ Using the Media to strengthen Business Advocacy”. The project, co-facilitated by KAB Consult and sponsored by the Business Advocacy Challenge ( BUSAC) Fund, began in 2006, on the theme “ Using the Media to Promote Small- Scale Business Concerns”.
" The GJA considers this noble cause capable of making a real difference in the business culture in Ghana in line with our efforts at promoting specialisation in journalism," Mr Tetteh said.
The President encouraged the JBA to collaborate with entities such as the Institute of Finance and Economic Journalists to assist in providing journalists with deeper understanding and monitoring ability of the Ghanaian business sector.
That, he said, would provide a reliable, educative and informative coverage through the promotion of dialogue, informed analysis on economic, financial and business issues and improve access of Ghanaians to information on national and international economic trends.
The Deputy Minister for Trade and Industry, Mr John Gyetuah, indicated that SMEs accounted for about 90 per cent of enterprises in the Ghanaian economy and contributed 60 per cent of employment and about six per cent to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Explaining, he added that SMEs were significant to Ghana's socio- economic development and growth.
He revealed that the Ministry of Trade had developed the Ghana Trade Policy, which detailed the policy prescriptions for the implementation of the government’s programme to promote export-led strategy for growth and domestic industrialisation.
To implement those policy prescriptions, Mr Gyetuah said the ministry had developed a five-year Trade Sector Support Programme (TSSP), spanning 2006 to 2010, to increase Ghana's competitiveness in international and domestic markets.
Mr Gyetuah commended the Business Support for Advocacy Challenge (BUSAC) for their services to business associations, which had enabled them to re-orient their operations to deliver the requisite services needed to support the growth and development of the SME sector.
The President of the JBA, Mr Wisdom Peter Awuku, said the ideas of the government to create jobs for all and invest in the people would not be realised if SMEs were not supported to expand their businesses.
He suggested that the decentralisation policy should be properly enhanced so that MMDAs, which are the implementing agencies at the local level, were empowered to deal with the problems on the ground without recourse to the central government.