Government supports creative art sector with GHC50m from CapBuss fund

The creative sector is not left out of the 2020 mid-year budget review as Minister of Finance Ken Ofori-Atta has disclosed that the sector will receive financial support from the government for the next six months.

In the presentation of the Mid-Year Budget Review in Parliament on Thursday, July 23, 2020, Mr Ken Ofori Atta announced that this money will be taken from the Coronavirus Alleviation Programme (CAP) Business Support Scheme also known as CapBuss Fund.

According to him, the government is going to “increase the CapBuss Programme by GH¢150 million to, among others, facilitate credit of GH¢50 million to support the Creative Arts, the Media and the Conference of Independent Universities.”

This comes after the announcement of a $9 million stimulus support for Small and Medium Scale Enterprises to be taken from the $40 million dollar Tourism Development Project Fund given to Ghana by the World Bank.

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus, a lot of creative artists have complained about the untold burden the pandemic has left on their business.

There have been a lot of calls on the government to provide some financial assistance to the sector. Most stakeholders of the Creative Arts sector have also protested the delay in the establishment of the Creative Arts Fund.

However, during the Creative Arts Forum in December 2019, the Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture, Barbara Oteng Gyasi explained that while they await the passage of the Creative Arts Bill and consequently the Fund, the government had asked Exim Bank to also provide a GHS10 million loan to the sector.