ABii National and Lendahand Foundation-Netherlands have organised a Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) capacity-building workshop in Kumasi.
ABii National’s sterling performance, over its short span of operations, had attracted partnership from the international financial company helping it to keep to its promise of extending financial literacy and advisory services to some sectors of the economy.
Lendahand has a social goal of creating jobs in emerging countries by financing local small and medium enterprises so people get a shot at escaping poverty.
A statement signed by Mr Ashie Bennet, the Unit Head- Corporate Affairs, Corporate Support & Service Excellence of ABii National, said the training programme was successful and informative.
The two companies aim, amongst others, at working with local partners who provide some of the lowest interest rates in the country it operates in, lending a total of € 60 million via the platform by the end of 2018 (which translates into the creation of an estimated 25,000 jobs) and becoming well positioned to become a key European player in SME financing in emerging economies.
The aim of the seminar was to bring together SME customers of the company and adequately equip them with some essential business tools as well as assist them with the adequate capacity to build and grow their businesses.
The training which brought together close to 40 Small and Medium Scale Enterprises within the Ashanti Region of Ghana, sought to equip business owners with basic book keeping and other financial tools.
To teach participants the importance of stakeholders in business growth, expose the trainees to proper financial practices which could help grow their businesses, assist the SME operators to appreciate the role of corporate governance in business growth and to educate the SME operators on how to grow a business from a one-man entity into a multi-million business venture.
The one-day programme saw very astute financial brains from Ghana and Netherlands taking the participants through relevant and practical sessions with the objective of increasing their knowledge-base for the enhancement of their businesses.
In an interview with the Managing Director of ABii National, Mr Godfried Osei-Boakye, he mentioned how pleased he was with the success rate of the programme and was confident that the businesses of their customers had now been set on the path of success.
This was also echoed by the Head of Business Development, Mr Abdul-Malik Bukari, who added that ABii National had plans to still extend the workshop to other regions in the country in order to equip their clients with the necessary skills and tools which will allow them to grow their SME businesses into giant and profitable companies.
A rather very elated customer of ABii National, Nana Darko, who deals in construction building materials as well as house-hold items and has been a client of the company for the past year shared his testimony on how useful the programme had been to him.
He narrated his daily challenges on the job with regards to wrong and bad financial decisions he had been making and was quick to point to the fact that most of those costly mistakes would have been totally eliminated if he had been equipped with the rich knowledge he had just gained from the programme.
He expressed his satisfaction with the initiative taken by ABii National and Lendahand, indicating his eagerness to apply what they he had learnt to his business.
All the other participants were also full of praise to the ABii National/Lendahand partnership for giving them such an opportunity; which for most of them was their first experience.
