Skills development workshop for SMEs( Page 34)

20/10/2008

Story: Mary Mensah
A Five-day workshop on developing the skills of Small and Medium-Scale Enterprises (SMEs) in identification, preparation, appraisal and financing of SMEs investment projects opened in Accra on Monday.
The project development appraisal workshop, organised by the National Board for Scale Enterprises (NBSSI) and the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) for SMEs seeks to train the participants on computer model for feasibility analysis and reporting to enhance their professional capabilities as businessmen, service providers and enhance joint ventureships between SME’s in Ghana and their counterparts in Asian countries.
Drawn from the trade and pharmaceutical industries as well as financial institutions, the workshop is also expected to facilitate trade and promote investment among members of the TECHNONET Africa Network.
The Executive Director of the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI), Nana (Dr) Baah Boakye, who opened the workshop, said the project was aimed at promoting trade investment among the seven member countries of TECHNONET Africa Network, namely Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, South Africa Uganda, Tanzania and Mozambique and Asia.
He said as a result of the slow pace of industrialisation in the south and the growing technological gap between the north and the south, the concept of South-South Global Access and Technology Exchange System (SS-GATE) was launched in Shanghai China, in May 2006.
He said the SS-GATE was to help developing countries to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by the business community and the UN system.
According to him, the SS-GATE system provided a virtual and physical market place for the exchange of assets, technologies and financial resources among developing countries in order to help accelerate economic development and poverty reduction.
Nana Boakye said the NBSSI wanted the SME’s to have a joint ventureship with the counterparts in Asia through the electronic medium of exchange.
He announced that in November, this year, there would be a workshop in Ghana to review the performance of the SS-GATE in four countries.
Those countries, he said, are Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania and Cameroon and indicated that it would be a follow-up on a visit paid by the Minister of Trade and Industries and the Executive Directors of the NBSSI and the AGI to Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia. (