The newly elected Tema Regional Chairman of the Ghana National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GNCCI), Mr Michael Kabutey Caesar, has called for the preparation of a manual to guide business sustainability and growth.
Mr Caesar, speaking to the Ghana News Agency in Tema after being voted as the Chairman of the GNCCI, Tema Region, noted that it was very important to come out with such guidelines to enable firms to grow.
He explained that aside from training and capacity building for business operators, they still needed a manual they could always refer to guide their business decisions.
The GNCCI Tema Regional Chairman said that sometimes communicating the same information to small, medium, and large businesses did not yield the needed impact.
“You may not be communicating because those in the small and medium will not get what you are saying or those big-time businesses already know these things. We need to segment and target and reach out to them with the view to lifting them from where they are to what we call growth and prosperity.”
He said businesses ought not to always remain small, but rather strive to grow to medium and to large, therefore, the need to have a manual to guide firms on how to move from one point to the next level in a clear concise way.
He advised business owners to leverage the opportunities economic challenges bring to be able to derive the best out of it.
He indicated that even though the country and for that matter the business community was in difficult times, they must brace themselves up to exploit the opportunities.
Mr Caesar also encouraged firms that needed help to reach out to the GNCCI and liaise with other sister firms to find common grounds to help them, saying that once they share their challenges and seek support in a unique tailored way, they would achieve growth in the sector.
Mr John Bentum, a Senior Manager with the Issuers Department of the Securities and Exchange Commission, educated the GNCCI members on how to raise funds for their businesses on the capital market and advised firms to do self-diagnosis on their businesses to know the exact help needed.
Mr Bentum explained that they could then contact any of the license brokers listed on the Commission’s website to help them choose the best capital plan for their businesses, noting that they could benefit from equity or debt markets.
He stated that equity allowed businesses to raise capital by inviting people to own shares in the company to help it either revitalize or expand after which dividends were paid annually to shareholders from the company’s profits.
He added that in the debt market, businesses were allowed to borrow by establishing a programme for some years with interest.
He added that “the good news is that repayment is on the coupon so if someone comes and raises money for three years, it is only after three years that the money gets paid back but in the interim every six months you pay interest on the money.”
Meanwhile, the GNCCI, Tema Regional Branch has successfully elected new executives to steer its affairs in accordance with Article 35 of the Chamber's Rule 2020, which mandates all regional executives to hold elections at least two months ahead of its national elections.