Women entrepreneurs blame their inability to pay back loans on spouses

Kumasi, Sept. 5, GNA - Some participants at a day's sensitisation workshop on how women entrepreneurs can access credit from the banks have stated that they are not able to pay back loans obtained from the banks within the stipulated time because their spouses also take 'loans' from them with promises of repayment in due course, which never materialises.

The women said their spouses also most often, tend to push certain parental responsibilities such as the payment of their children's school fees on to them when they notice that their wives businesses are flourishing, a situation which often lead to the gradual diminishing of the seed capital.

The majority of women entrepreneurs, who attended a day's sensitisation workshop in Kumasi on Thursday on how women in business could form associations to access loans from the banks to expand their businesses, expressed these sentiments.

It was organised by the National Council on Women and Development (NCWD) under the auspices of the Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs to find ways to economically empower women to enable them to contribute more significantly to the family budgets and for the advancement of their communities.

A few participants, however, differed from this stance and attributed the failure to pay back loans on time to mismanagement, unrealistic and vain lifestyles, inordinate spending on funeral clothes and buying on credit.

The workshop, therefore, took the women through lectures on how to manage their businesses well to enable them to save money so that they could service their loans and become credit worthy.