YouStart Initiative won’t be 'whom you know' policy – Ofori-Atta

Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta has allayed fears that the YouStart initiative by the government will be a “whom you know” policy where beneficiaries will only be some selected group of youth.

According to him, YouStart is a policy for every Ghanaian and measures have been put in place to make it a national policy.

Speaking on Good Evening Ghana on Thursday, 18 November 2021, Mr Ofori-Atta said the whom you know thing “was an issue that came up strongly when we went round the country but there’s a whole computerization system that is going to be set up.”

“The distribution of the outlet between NEIP and the major banks are going to be national and the beauty of digitisation is that it goes beyond the personal, so, I don’t need to be part of the party for me to put my application in there for it to be assessed or for you to come for the training which will be as wholesale as possible and then you move on to the next category so we’ll continue to tighten it but I think it’s going to be such a national programme that truly this issue should hopefully diminish with time,” he stated.

YouStart is an initiative to help young people start and grow small businesses.

The initiative is looking to create one million jobs with a seed capital of GHS1billion and would take effect from March 2022 as announced by Mr Ofori-Atta in the 2022 budget.

The initiative will be implemented by the Ghana Enterprises Agency (GEA), the National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme (NEIP), and partner financial institutions.

Interested persons will register online while the NEIP engages Faith-Based Organisations as partners for the delivery of essential artisanal skills, business competitions, and feasibility studies and introduction to financing institutions with a commitment of up to 10% of GoG contribution to the programme.

YouStart will provide the youth with:

i. Training: Skills Development, Entrepreneurial Support, and Business Advisory services;

ii.Funding: Access to Competitive Credit and Starter Packs;

iii.Enterprise Promotion: Mentoring and Access to Markets, including Portals to facilitate “digital linkages” between youth-led enterprises and other businesses and relevant Government agencies.

Young people under the programme will benefit from district level loans under GHS10,000 after 2-3 months of training and soft loans of up to GHS50,000 to help start-ups (in particular by young graduates from and school-leavers) and small businesses to expand.

Starter packs with get soft loans tied to equipment acquisition of up to GHS50,000 for individuals and GHS100,000 for associations/groups.

SMEs will get a standardised loan package of between GHS100,000 to GHS400,000 at concessional rates.