No quota for women enterprises in government’s COVID-19 stimulus package — ActionAid report

Disbursement of the government’s coronavirus stimulus package for businesses made no quota allocation for women enterprises, a gender analysis of the programme by Action Aid has revealed.

The women’s rights-focused NGO has therefore called on the government to consider gender analysis in the success of future economic stimulus interventions.

Government’s COVID-19 Alleviation and Revitalisation of Enterprise Support (CARES) programme, had allocated GHC 1 billion under Coronavirus Alleviation Programme Business Support Scheme (CAP-Buss) to resuscitate Micro, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (MSMEs) post-COVID, through the Ghana Enterprises Agency (GEA).

The research by the NGO, perused among others, the eligibility criteria, communication and sensitisation, application modes, and disbursement formulas, and findings were collated in a report that was launched at the end of the 2022 Annual Conference of the Organisation's Young Urban Women’s Movement, held in Ho.

Solely targeting MSMEs, the CAP-Buss had by Feb 2022, attracted some 918,000 applications, of which 64 per cent were from women-led enterprises.

Females also accounted for 66.9 per cent of the total 312,000 successful applicants.

The report said despite bearing more effects of the coronavirus, women and girls had no specific provisions made for their business enterprises under the programme, and that the allocation also did not target entrepreneurs specifically.

“The disproportionate effect of the health crisis on women and girls is well known. They are the ones who lost jobs, had an increased burden of care, experienced domestic violence and have suffered dire consequences for their enterprises. There was no quota for women’s enterprises.

"Similarly, despite the country’s focus on youth, the GEA did not specifically have a target for young entrepreneurs, including female entrepreneurs.”

The research, which was focused on young women in the informal sector, covered 25 districts in nine regions across the country.

It said the eligibility criteria favoured formal enterprises, while the application formats and processes challenged female informal workers with low education.

“With a high illiteracy rate for women compared with men, and between women in rural areas compared with those in urban areas, competing an application for the stimulus package in English and online was a barrier for people with limited digital skills and internet connectivity.

"Although there was a window to complete a paper application, the primary online process meant that MSEs had to rely on other people or had to travel to communities with electricity and internet to be able to complete the application.

"10.9% of respondents for this survey who work in the informal sector as enterprise owners or workers do not have any education, 41.9% completed June High School, and only 10.9% have tertiary level education.

"A large proportion of respondents, 81.5%, required help from others to complete the application form, with 35.7% of these receiving help from their trade associations, 25.5% from the GEA and 20.9% from a friend. Other sources of help were from workers at internet cafes, family members and the district assemblies,” the report detailed.

Highlighting the effect of payment modes on the reach of the support programme, he said illegal fees by fraudulent entities also kept many informal workers away from the support.

The report in general commended the support programme, which it said largely attained the government’s objectives of business formalization and increased financial inclusion through demand for Tax Identification Numbers, bank accounts and digital identities.

It said however that the demand for documentation and digital access stopped some MSMEs from applying for the funds, while poor record keeping meant many self-employed women could not prove the impact of pandemic on their business.

"Low access to national identification documents among women also was an inhibiting factor. Some MSMEs encountered challenges at the application stage, where many did not have the required documentation. In addition, accessing digital infrastructure to complete their applications was also a challenge.

“Women who are self-employed without workers could not provide evidence of the number of employees, although their enterprises had apprentices who could have been counted as employees.

"Another limiting factor that women entrepreneurs faced was evidence of the impact of the pandemic on their enterprises, which required records of some sort, when in fact, many of such enterprises do not keep records.

"Production of a valid identification card - a voter’s ID, a passport, Ghana Card or driver’s license was also a challenge because many women do not have a driver’s license or passport, and at the onset of the CAP-Buss, many Ghanaians did not have the Ghana Card,” it stated.

The report concluded that the GHC 1 billion CARES programme for the sector was insufficient to cover all MSMEs. It added that the unavailability of comprehensive data on the enterprises took some blame.

“Having 918,000 applicants with requests of the value of GHC 9.32 billion demonstrates a dire need among MSMEs to recover from the pandemic or to expand businesses. Unsurprisingly, this study shows that several did not apply, and for those that did, some 66 per cent were unsuccessful. Similarly, for those successful enterprises, the amounts of money they received from the GEA were below what they requested.”

In a series of recommendations, the report suggested that policy responses in similar situations “should be informed by a gender analysis of the impact on the informal to adequately capture those persons and enterprises which fall through the cracks.

“In all of the economic and social interventions, a missing group of informal workers, like domestic workers, remain invisible in the recovery efforts without any form of support.”

It called also for loan amounts to be increased, which would be facilitated by an impact assessment of the funds on businesses.

“The stimulus package should be a catalyst for businesses to get to their pre-pandemic status as much as possible. This is possible only when the amounts provided by the GEA to MSMEs are adequate. Therefore, the GEA should assess the impact of the funds to give the enterprises the desired boost for recovery.”

The report noted that there was the need to sustain efforts at transforming informal enterprises, to benefit particularly, young female-owned enterprises, adding, “the government should continue to formalize the informal sector through the CAP-Buss, using the data collected to inform ongoing and future economic support to boost businesses and incomes in this sector.”

The report called for a special fund for women MSMEs, and also for the recognition of informal workers in the formulation of policies, as the nation increased the business formalization drive.

It indicated that measures to formalise informal businesses must be sustained and the enhancement of awareness on informal sector worker rights.

The report indicated that more coordination among sector agencies would become necessary as the “GEA alone cannot address the many facets of the informal sector”, calling for young women entrepreneurs to be positioned through training to leverage government’s youth entrepreneurial initiatives including the novel YouStart.

“The report says Government should not distribute the support in a blanket way to the informal sector. It should identify peculiar challenges facing them, and find ways of supporting them,” Margaret Brew-Ward, Advocacy and Campaigns Manager of Actionaid told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) after the launch.

She said the GEA had shown some positive reformations in oncoming programmes, and hoped that “they are adhered to in the implementation, because in most cases what we find is that what is on the grounds is not what is on paper.”

She stressed that findings of the report would be shared with all stakeholders including the GEA. She added that the NGO would analyse the YouStart and other programs following implementation from a gender perspective.