Accra, Ghana – Chief of Staff Julius Debrah has reaffirmed the government’s unwavering commitment to empowering indigenous businesses, strengthening the private sector, and promoting entrepreneurship across the country.
He made this known during a media briefing at the Jubilee House, ahead of the highly anticipated Kwahu Business Forum.
The forum, scheduled to take place this weekend, is expected to bring together start-ups, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), investors, and key industry players.
It will serve as a platform for exchanging ideas, building partnerships, and attracting investment to support the growth of local businesses.
Mr. Debrah also announced that the African Development Bank, alongside several top-tier banks and financial institutions, will participate in the event.
Their involvement is expected to boost confidence in the initiative and provide vital support for emerging enterprises.
Read the full speech delivered by Mr. Julius Debrah during his media engagement at the Jubilee House below:
So the conversation is about the Kwahu Business Forum and I’m sure one may ask, why the Kwahu Business Forum?
As part of the programs and vision of President Mahama, he wanted to find a way to grow more businesses. Usually we talk about this, but we don’t have practical strategy that rolls out to enable us to be able to see the results.
Now he’s looking at developing more SMEs, especially those who are interested into agro-processing, manufacturing, things that are tangible for exports, so that that will feed into his vision of leading the accelerated export council.
And so last year we were in Kwahu, and the President invited the business community and introduced the concept to them by asking them what are some of the things they want him to do if he becomes President.
Luckily enough, he won the election and he’s become the President, and so he wants to be a President who walks the talk, not just talking and then living it, so it becomes like a talk show.
So he, as part of fulfilling his promise to the people he met, has requested that this year we’re going to have the second edition of the Kwahu Business Forum.
Now, this year the key thing about it is that we’ve invited almost all the financial institutions in Ghana, especially the public-owned ones, and to our surprise, they all showed up.
And then we thought that they were just coming to just sell their products or to explain to the various entrepreneurs who show up the kind of things they’ll be able to do to help them grow their businesses.
And you can list all the banks, you know, from Agriculture Development Bank, NIB, Republic Bank, many of them have agreed.
We were even thinking that at least they could send their sales reps or marketing officers, but the chief executives themselves, the MDs, decided that because of the importance the President has attached to the event, they are going to be there themselves.
So the form is taken is that we’ll have the forum, which will be a gathering like a typical conference style.
We’ll be held in segments, so let’s say the first segment will be people who are talking about agro-processing, and the forum they will be able to make available to individuals who are interested.
Maybe the second session will be on manufacturing, you know, things like that.
To our surprise, I won’t say a surprise though, African Development Bank has also shown an interest, and so they are going to be there.
Their country rep is going to be there, and they are also going to explain to the private sector participants some of the things that they will be able to do for them.
The event itself will take place on a Saturday morning, and run up to about 5 p.m. in the evening, with all the leaders of the banking institutions coming to explain to the participants the products they have for them.
Alongside is going to be the exhibition, where we’re mounting a series of exhibition booths, so they will have their banking staffs with their pamphlets or brochures or whatever, so the participants can walk through and, you know, do some pitching with the individuals. So both will run at the same time.
By the Sunday morning, the forum will not be held again, just the exhibition will run on the Sunday. So essentially this is what is going to happen.
Now, why are we talking about this at the presidency? We are talking about it at the presidency because of the importance the president attaches to it. It’s a project that he wants to see succeed.
Now, the first strategy the bankers themselves gave us is that at least each of the banks that will show up are going to pick five projects, five bankable projects for this year.
And they expect that next year when we return to Kwahu, they will invite those five people that they helped or assisted to come and testify.
So if this continues for the next five years, each bank picking minimum five people, five enterprises to support, the following year doing the same, I’m sure by the end of his four-year tenure we’ll have over 600 enterprises that we can pinpoint and see that these are things that President Mahama started.
And so basically this is about it. If there are questions for me to answer, I’ll be more than willing to answer it.
It’s going to be an annual event. Even though the name is titled Kwahu Business Forum, I think going into the future it will be national in character whereby business people will travel from all over the country to converge at Kwahu and to have interaction with bankers and public institutions.
So for example, it should be possible that somewhere along the line next year they could have maybe the Commissioner General of GRA trying to explain to businesses the advantages they can have and things like that.
So basically it will just be around how to grow businesses under President Mahama’s watch. And I think it’s something that is welcoming. And I support it because without the private sector growing, not much will happen apart from creating jobs, people making money.
Our system itself, I think, will flourish. And then automatically to feed into his agenda of leading the export drive in the West African sub-region so that when he starts, let’s say towards the end of the year, President Mahama could organize Ghana’s international trade fair in, say, Burkina Faso, in Niger, in Mali, and he will take along some of the Ghana entrepreneurs to go and showcase their products so that they can import from us.
Story by: Emmanuel Romeo Tetteh(#RomeoWrites
) / Ahotoronline.com | Ghana 
