According to John Ampontuah Kumah, a Deputy Minister-designate for Finance, Ghana can produce 10,000 billionaires via young entrepreneurship in the next ten years if the government continues to invest in entrepreneurship as it did in its first term.
He mentioned this when he came before the Appointments Committee on Wednesday, June 9, 2021, to be vetted as a Deputy Minister of Finance.
According to him, the government granted funds to over 9,000 enterprises that may grow up to employ more people with additional assistance during his stint as Chief Executive Officer of the National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme (NEIP).
“As the Chief Executive Officer of NEIP, I oversaw the training of 45,783 businesses on various business management practices under the Presidential Business Support Programme, and also disbursed funds ranging from GHC 2,000 to GHC 100,000 for 9,350 businesses. These businesses are all doing well and if more capital is injected into their businesses they can scale up and become giants in their areas,” he said.
Should he be accepted, the Deputy Minister for Finance-designate informed the Committee that his main emphasis will be on ensuring that more financing is provided to young entrepreneurs, as well as assisting in the development and implementation of policies that would generate more employment.
“We helped 9,350 firms in four years. The government expects to fund an additional 9,000 firms over the following four years, totaling around 18,000 enterprises. We can make 10,000 millionaires out of this group in the next decade if these enterprises are properly managed and given more funding and assistance. This is President Akufo-vision, Addo’s and it is feasible,” he continued.
Meanwhile, according to OXFAM International, 1,000 new billionaires were produced in Ghana between 2006 and 2016, but 300,000 people might have been pulled out of poverty if inequality had not risen during this time.
Source: CITINEWSROOM
