NEIP to create 5000 jobs this year

About 5000 direct jobs are expected to be created under the National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Plan (NEIP) this year.

Established in 2017, the NIEP aims at providing business development services; start-up incubators and funding for young businesses to enable them to grow and become successful.

Already about 7000 applicants have applied to be enrolled under the initiative.

Speaking in an interview with Class Business, Director of Business Support for the NEIP, Franklin Owusu Karikari, said the move is in line with government’s quest of reducing the unemployment situation in the country.

He said: “All these jobs that we are thinking of creating are coming from the various modules that we have. 5000 [jobs] are going to be created. Currently, we have 7000 applicants who are seeking funding from us. The plan is to ensure that we provide support for all the 7000 in the areas of training and capacity building supports. Then the best 500 will get financial support of GHS10,000 to GHS100,000. The 500 businesses, averagely, each will employ 10 people, that is about 5000 jobs created for this year.

“We’ll do another call for application in 2019 and so it means that for our Industralisation plan, we are seeking to create 5900 direct jobs and with all these modules we are looking close to about 30,000 indirect jobs.

“These are not numbers we are seeking to cough from our minds but practical things are on the ground for you to verify and know that these things are possible and it can be done.”