Central Region: SMEs Benefit From Economic Empowerment Projects

The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the National Board for Small-Scale Industries (NBSSI), has organised a day's training and capacity building workshop for Small and Medium-Scale Enterprises (SMEs) in the Central.

The training, focused on improving the knowledge and skills of SMEs to help promote best practices to fuel the growth of their businesses at a reduced cost.

This was geared towards improving the productivity of SMEs while strengthening their capacity through the application of basic 'Kaizen medel' of business management.

Kaizen is a Japanese philosophy that focuses on continual improvement in all aspects of production.

Mrs Francisca Dokua Larbi, the Head of Cape Coast Metro Business and Advisory Centre appealed to the participants to embrace the Kaizen business model which focused on improving processes and products while using employee creativity to help define the way procedures and systems could be improved.

According to her, the approach was the best way to increase productivity and maintain quality of products with unrivalled services experience.

She observed that the lack of start-up capital, high interest rates, lack of business advice, lack of access to public infrastructure and banking services were some of the challenges facing SMEs in the Region.

To outwit these challenges, she underlined the need for SMEs to take customer service seriously as it remained the bedrock of every successful organisation.

"A business cannot survive without its customers and a good relationship with customers determines the future of a business. Every decision taken by any business outfit should be geared towards satisfying customers," she said.

Mr Jonathan Amponsah Mensah, a participant lauded the effort by NBSSI and JiCA to support SMEs not only with money, but knowledge which would enable them grow their businesses.

He described the training as apt and timely and called for more of such periodic trainings to empower them to adopt best practices in managing their business to expand and create employment.

Another participant, Mr Solomon Botway also called on the Regional Secretariat of NBSSI to ensure that the Kaizen methods was extended to all districts in the Region so as to enhance product quality and business competitiveness.