GHANA’S National Board for Small Scale Industries(NBSSI), a non-profit public sector organisation under the Ministry of Trade & Industry has urged the Ghanaian media to develop innovative packages for Small, and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to advertise their products and services in the country.
The move, according to the NBSSI, would help address the problem of SMEs’ poor visibility which leads to low purchase of their products and services both local and abroad.
The Director of Entrepreneurship Development Department of the NBSSI, Mrs. Anna Himbson, who made the call at a day’s Ecobank sponsored workshop on Business and SME Reporting, organised by the Journalists for Business Advocacy (JBA) in Accra, over the weekend, noted that players in the SMEs sector could not compete with large enterprises for advertising space and appealed to media owners to come to the aid of the SMEs in this regard.
According to her, SMEs which contribute about 80% of the larger industrial sector and employed about 70% of the country’s larbour force was still invisible in Ghanaian media in terms of advertisements.
Buttressing the sentiments expressed by Mrs. Himbson, the Director of Women’s Entrepreneurship Development of the NBSSI, Ms. Habiba Sumani, added that some SMEs have come with wonderful products and services but because of small budget they could not promote them well in the media for the public to purchase them.
She used the occasion to appeal to journalists to follow-up on key policies targeting private sector development.
This, Ms Sumani, who was one of the facilitators of the workshop, believes will help speed up the implementation of the policies for the betterment of the private sector and the country at large.
Despite the numerous challenges, including lack of managerial skills, inadequate finance and poor record keeping, she was confident that the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) could do well in a favourable business environment.
Ms Asumani added: “MSMEs can realize their full potential to promote economic development if they were to have access to: markets, finance, technology, and business skills.
These can only be achieved through entrepreneurship innovation and government intervention”, she stated.
Presenting a paper on a topic: ‘Applying business language to reporting’, the Editor of Graphic Business, Theophilus Yarey advised journalists to give concise explanation to business terms in order to make it easy for readers to understand.
He added: “You (Journalists) should desist from copy-cutting into your stories, make sure you have clear understanding of every business terminology you use in writing your stories example, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Inflation, budget deficit, among others.”
On his part, the Chief Executive Officer of El ded Consult, Fred Avornyo, admonished journalists, in telling their stories to focus on the positive aspects of SMEs in the country.
He encouraged journalists to create programmes and columns targeting the promotion of the SMEs in their various media platforms in the country, stressing “We need to do more reports on the SMEs sector”
The Chief Executive Officer of Creative Trends, Yaw Asamoah noted: “Traditional reporting doesn’t work anymore” and urged journalists to write concretive and intelligent feature articles for the businessmen to read and know where they are falling short.
The General Secretary of Journalists for Business Advocacy (JBA), Suleiman Mustapha said: “SMEs in Ghana continued to provide more jobs for the teeming youth, but they lack the voice and budgets to drive their campaigns. That is why the JBA was set up in 2008 to champion their cause”.
African Eye News.com
