Scale up support for SMEs – Freda Duplan to BoG

The Board Chair of the Zenith Bank, Freda Duplan, has asked the Bank of Ghana (BoG) to make deliberate efforts to support small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) secure loans from banks to grow their businesses.

She explained that some analysts are asking commercial banks to give out loans to the SMEs below the base points to enable them to expand especially in times of the pandemic.

However, she said, without the support of the central bank the commercial banks will not be able to give out loans below the base point.

Ms Duplan was speaking during the Ghana Economic Forum in Accra.

She said that “there has to be a deliberate decision and support to give them some form of subsidised interest rates.

“This will have to be done together with the Bank of Ghana, because there is a base lending rate and then on top of it comes.

“So if the base is already high, it is then very difficult for a bank to go lower than the base lending rate.

“For those of you who remember, for example, the EU had a lot of subsidies over the years, they have reduced a lot of these subsidies and the interventions. We as a continent and especially as Ghana, are going have to do the same.”