9 banks partner government to support ‘YouStart’ programme

A consortium of nine banks is collaborating with government to provide credit to existing youth-led companies and, in the process, create one million jobs in the next three years.

Under the commercial programme of the YouStart initiative, the government will provide support for existing youth-led businesses with between ¢100,000 working capital and ¢500,000 for those in need of capital expenditure. Interest rate will not be more than 10%.

Speaking to the media, John Awuah, President of the Ghana Association of Banks, listed the participating banks as Ghana Commercial Bank (GCB), Consolidated Bank Ghana (CBG), Access Bank, Absa Bank, FBN Bank, ADB, Fidelity Bank, Ecobank and Bank of Africa.

He was confident that with time, more banks would come on board.

He said, the community of banks was aware of the difficulties faced by entrepreneurs in accessing credit, and so the scheme aimed at making lending conditions less stringent to enable businesses to scale up and create jobs.

Listing the conditions for accessing the scheme, Mr Awuah said it was open to existing businesses whose prime movers were youths between ages 18 and 40.

He added that entrepreneurs aged above 40 would have to prove that their employees were SSNIT contributors, and that 50% of their employees were between 18 and 40.

They would also have to show that their businesses, when supported, will be profitable and create youth employment.
Mr Awuah said a website would soon be launched for interested businesses to enter their applications.
The YouStart commercial programme will take off at the latter part of June 2022.

 

Bainamultimedia

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