The biggest challenge facing MSMEs is access to market – Kosi Yankey-Ayeh

The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Enterprises Agency, Kosi Yankey-Ayeh, says one of the biggest challenges facing Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs) is their lack of access to market.

According to her, the lack of access to market is largely driven by Ghana’s highly informalised business sector which prevents businesses from accessing the necessary funding and support needed to grow their operations and meet the demands of the market.

In Ghana, micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) account for 92% of businesses and contribute to about 70% of Gross Domestic Product, this is according to research from the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER), University of Ghana, 2015. 

The majority of these MSMEs are not registered with the Office of the Registrar of Companies and lack necessary certification.

She noted that despite the opportunities technology poses in the area of providing access to market, without the necessary formalization of these businesses, their access will be very limited.

Giving more details on JoyNews’ PM Express Business Edition, she said “Access to market is one of the biggest challenges I think a lot of MSMEs face. I think market is an issue because it goes back to what it says again, access. So I think technology has come to play a major role where it’s given people access, a platform to create access.

“But how do you get that access? And that’s where a lot of the challenge had been which is access to the product. Where do I find it? Do I find it in the quantity that I want every time that I want it? Is it the same quality every time I want it? So there are so many different challenges,” she said.

She added that, “Now you also realize that you have a strong and huge informal sector. So through this programme it has been cemented what we’ve always talked about, that the sector is highly informal.

“So now when you say the sector is informal it means they’re not registered with the ORC, you realize that they don’t even have certification with either the Food and Drugs Authority or the Ghana Standards Authority, so the formalization aspect to give it access to market is not there.

“So if you don’t have that formalization in place, then the next challenge is how do you get access to funding? Because if you go to a bank they’re going to ask you where are your documents? And so there are a lot of challenges that you face when you have a highly informal sector to work with in the first place.”

Meanwhile, GEA says through the CAPBuSS project more than 200,000 MSMEs businesses have been formalized through TIN number registrations, bank accounts and official mobile money account registrations.