The Minister of Trade and Industry, Dr. Ekwow Spio-Garbrah has disclosed that government has no plans of giving any stimulus package to companies affected by the ongoing load shedding exercise.<\/p>\n
[contextly_sidebar id=”Mc92DJILvuX04FLYWJ6iTrhDQFselvM3″]The Minister however indicated that government has put together some incentives to help industries stay in business.<\/p>\n
The Ghana Employers\u2019 Associations has confirmed that close to 13,000 workers were sacked<\/a><\/strong> <\/span>in the first quarter of 2015 .<\/p>\n The Industry sector is seriously being affected by the power crisis after it was included in the load-rationing schedule at the beginning of the year.<\/p>\n The Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) has urged government to establish a stimulus package as a short-term measure to save businesses from collapsing.<\/p>\n A group called Alliance for Young Entrepreneurs (AYE) has threatened legal action \u00a0against the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG)\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/a>over the\u00a0power provider\u2019s failure to religiously follow its load shedding time table.<\/span><\/p>\n Dr Spio-Garbrah in an interview with Citi News<\/strong> said there is no stimulus package saying, \u201cthere is no package at the Ministry of Industry for companies because of dumsor \u2013 we don\u2019t have a dumsor-related package.\u201d<\/p>\n He mentioned that all his outfit can do is offer interest rates that are \u201cslashed when they are used for certain kinds of procurement such as an Italian facility which is able to give people loans in the 12 percentile region.\u201d<\/p>\n He said there is also the export development and agricultural development fund which is gives businesses loans that are below the normal Ghanaian market rate.<\/p>\n According to him, there is also the rural entrepreneurship programme which trains workers and individuals who want to start their own business as well as help individuals develop business plans.<\/p>\n \u201cSo those are the kind of incentives you will get from the Ministry of Trade and Industry,\u201d the sector Minister stressed.<\/p>\n Spio-Garbrah added that \u201cthere are many things going on in the Ministry of Trade and Industry to support businesses and workers but if you talk about a dumsor-related package; that is not what we have.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n By: Efua Idan Osam\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana
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