The National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme (NEIP) under the Ministry of Business Development has stated that it is ready to train all 12,000 applicants for the second window of the Presidential Business Support Programme.
In an exclusive interview with Kasapa Business News, the Chief Executive Officer of the NEIP, Lawyer John Kuma said the second window received 12,000 applications from all sixteen regions of the country and added that all 12,000 applicants will undergo training.
He said the training programme will begin next week in all sixteen regions of the country and indicated that applicants will start receiving phone calls from the NEIP as to where they will be going for training.
Lawyer John Kuma explained further that 2,000 applicants will be selected after the training and as such entreated all applicants to take the training programme very serious.
“The training is very important because that is where we will assess all applicants and their business or business ideas and how government can support. The selection will be done at the training and after that, the results will be given to the NEIP for due diligence and disbursement and so it is important for all applicants not to miss it”, he advised.
He said his outfit has already met with the trainers from all the various private training hubs for the exercise
Lawyer John Kuma said the project under the first window supported over 7,000 applicants with training, business advisory services, technical support and access to market and at the end about 1,350 were selected and supported.
The second window application is seeking to provide similar trainings for all applicants.
“This year we are supporting applicants with a seed capital fund ranging from GHs10,000 to GHs100,000. The money is not for free but beneficiaries are given a period of about two years to pay back with a 10% interest per anum. We try to make payment very flexible for beneficiaries so they can either pay monthly or quarterly”, Mr. Kuma explained.
NEIP is a flagship program of the Government of Ghana to support and promote entrepreneurship and business development. NEIP was launched by the President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo with a seed capital of USD10 million which is expected to be scaled up to USD100 million.