Mr. Kofi Sekyere chairs a reconstituted nine-member board which includes Mr. Yaw Owusu Brempong, MD of the Venture capital Fund, the Hon. Fuseini Issah,  the Member of Parliament for Okaikwei North constituency, Madam Efua Asabea Asare, Mr. Peterson Ekow Afedzie and Dr. John Kofi Mensah. The others are Mr. Franklin Owusu Asafo Adjei, Mr. Brian Frimpong and Mrs. Efua Apenteng.

Mrs. Abena Osei Asare, Deputy Minister of Finance, who administered the oath of office at the inauguration of the new Board recalled that: “Over time, various management issues have been cited in the Auditor General’s report from wrongful payments of millions of dollars, wrongful acquisition of a property, gratuity payment to the board without approval, granting huge loans without due diligence and others.”

Mrs. Osei Asare charged the Board to focus on their mandate, clean up the sunken image of the Fund and strengthen the capacity of its management and staff to be more innovative.

Mr. Kofi Sekyere thanked President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for the opportunity to serve the country and pledged the Board’s commitment to work hard to adequately resource and empower the SMEs.

“Personally, I fully appreciate the enormity of the task of steering the Venture Capital Fund in the best direction to enable it to fully actualize those critical objectives for which the fund was set up and as an avowed team-player, I wish to vocalize the collective commitment of this board to work diligently and assiduously to ensure that the mandate before us is executed with precision and without blemish,” Mr. Sekyere said.

The Board Chairman said as it has been evidently proven in developed economies, SMEs are the ‘indisputable engines of growth’ and that apart from propelling the national economy forward, the empowerment of SME’s and private sector ventures will be highly supportive of the government’s vision of One District, One Factory and a sure way of generating employment and upgrading the quality of life of Ghanaians.

He lamented that over the years, access to credit and equity funding for small and medium scale enterprises even for those operating in acknowledged priority sectors of the economy has been a major challenge.

“It is this challenge that I and my good colleagues on this Board will set out to rectify and work to enable our SMEs play that crucial role they should be playing in the growth and development agenda of our dear country,” said Mr. Sekyere.

The Fund was established in 2004 by the Venture Capital Fund Act 680, with the mandate of providing financial resources and equity funding for the development and promotion of venture capital financing for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in specified sectors of the Ghanaian economy.

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Source: Neo Bantu

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Venture Capital Trust Fund was established in 2004 to provide low-cost financing to small and medium enterprises.

According to the report, there were no documents to prove that about 53 individual loans were actually given out.

The report also says, while over GHc 1.3 million was given out in loans without any agreement with the borrowers, about GHc 915,000 was also granted in loans without any information on the location and registered offices of the borrowers.

These infractions are, however, being investigated, according to the Chief Executive Officer of the Trust Fund, Yaw Owusu Brempong, who was speaking on Monday before Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee.

“Going through the loans that were granted between the period of 2010 to August 2015, I have identified a number of irregularities; some including the no application letters, some no offer letters, some certificates of incorporation even being faked…”

“In total, about GHc 18.2 million had been granted as loans and because of these irregularities, payments have not been coming,” Mr. Owusu Brempong said.

The company also has GHc 30 million outstanding in interests accrued.

“Because of these irregularities, we are working with institutions like EOCO and the BNI and they have all the 205 loans that were granted. We are cooperating with them and the people who are culpable will be brought to book,” he noted.

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By: Sixtus Dong Ullo/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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Similar sensitization workshops had already been carried out in Central, Western, Eastern, Ashanti, Volta, Brong Ahafo, Upper West and Upper East regions.

The sensitization by the Taskforce was carried out under the instruction of the President Dramani Mahama to ensure that dealers and the public understood the work of the Taskforce so as to help with information for the seizure of pirated textiles imported into the country.

Appiah Donyina, Chairman of the TSDPGTD who addressed the last in the series of fora across the country in Tamale on Thursday said, government had the obligation to ensure the protection of trade commodities and that counterfeit products must be seized.

He explained that government had no intentions to ban the importation of textiles into the country but rather frowned on the importation of pirated or fake textiles into the Ghanaian market noting that importers who had the habit of sending Ghanaian textile to China to be pirated must stop the act else they would not be spared when caught.

Mr Donyina indicated that over 6,000 pirated textiles had been burnt since the Taskforce started its work in 2010 and that 2,000 more had also been seized pending burning and stressed that more seizures would be done until it freed the Ghanaian market of pirated textiles.

Abdul-Rahaman Hannan Gundadow, Tamale Metropolitan Chief Executive who read a speech on behalf of the Northern Regional Minister Alhaji Limuna Mohammed-Muniru said the Taskforce was to protect the local textile industries to promote made-in-Ghana textile prints.

He observed that the Northern Region was a casualty to the collapse of the textile industry saying, “the collapse of the textile industry due to trade in pirated textile and imports of cheap textile led to loss of jobs and incomes that were derived from cotton farming”.

“In the 1980’s, the textile industry, which used to employ over 30,000 workers could only boast of less than 3,000 workers due to the fact that the industry is operating below 30 percent of its installed capacity”, he said.

Eugene Adarkwa Addai, a member of the Taskforce said every African textile had standards because they all had 100 percent cotton and could be identified by its label and self-edging.

He blamed Ghanaians for killing the local textile industry and urged importers who were interested in importing textile into the country to follow laid down rules at the Ministry of Trade and Industry to import counterfeit-free products.

Source: GNA

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