BMrs Grace Anim-Yeboah interacts with owners of SMEs
Barclays
Bank Ghana marked this year’s World SME Day in Tamale by organising a special SME
clinic for businesses in northern Ghana.
This was to help
them benefit from the bank’s tailor-made capacity-building programme aimed at
educating and supporting SMEs in running a sound and sustainable business.
The World
SME Day is a United Nations recognized day to raise public awareness about the contribution
of small and medium enterprises to sustainable development.
The UN
General Assembly, recognizing the importance of SMEs, decided to declare 27th
June asthe micro, small and
medium-sized enterprises Day.The Day was first celebrated in 2017.
Speaking to
participants, Business Banking Director at Barclays Bank Ghana, Grace
Anim-Yeboah, said SMEs formed a core part of the bank’s business and these capacity-building
engagements are to help SME clients improve their business processes, implement
good corporate governance structures, improve customer service, instill
excellent human resource management practices and have better access to credit.
Nana
Essilfuah Boison, Marketing and Corporate Relations Director, used the occasion
to update partcipants on the bank’s transition to Absa, and the opportunities the change presented to
customers and all other stakeholders of the bank.
About 400 SMEs benefitted from the training. Beneficiary SMEs were
also taken through a series of sessions including Group Imports, Credit
Sanctioning, Fraud Alerts and Forex Trading, among others.
They were
also introduced to the bank’s various products and services developed for their
benefit. Among the new products and services for businesses are Digital Banking, Mobile Money Collection
Solution and Barclays Business Club.
Last year,
the Barclays SME clinics supported more than 750 clients with various capacity-building
programmes. This year, many more are expected to benefit from it.
