‘Improper book-keeping hampers SMEs’

About 95 percent of Small and Medium-scale Enterprises (SMEs) in Ghana are not able to achieve the desired growth as a result of the lack of proper book-keeping.

Due to the lack of records, most SMEs who apply for loans from financial institutions are turned down because the latter would not like to invest in companies whose daily transactions are not transparent.

Godfried Osei-Boakye, Managing Director of ABii National Savings & Loans Limited, disclosed this at a seminar his outfit organised jointly with LendaHand, a Dutch not-for-profit organisation recently in Accra.

He said proper book-keeping would help indigenous businesses to secure loans from banks.

“We’ve identified these challenges within the two years of our operation. A lot of local businesses would have grown tremendously if they had proper bookkeeping skills. And the business owners often do not want to employ people to take care of those aspects for them, hence the stunted sizes of their businesses.

“We at Abii National believe that the introduction of timely seminars for SMEs would help put them on a sound footing and drive them to practise proper book-keeping to expand and employ more people,” the MD told BUISNESS GUIDE.

Menson Torkonoo, Board Chairman of ABii National, in a remark, advised SMEs to employ qualified people to take care of aspects of their businesses where they lack expertise.

He also urged entrepreneurs to form partnerships with other indigenous companies in order to grow their balance sheet and attract international investment.

ABii National was founded in 2011 and licensed under the Non-Bank Financial Institutions Law, 2008, (Act 774) to provide financial services to the public.

ABii, which is supervised by Bank of Ghana (BoG), offers direct foreign transfers and other forms of international trade through its partner banks.