Kwadwo Affram Asiedu, Deputy Minister of Trade Industry and President's Initiatives on Tuesday called for the re-engineering of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SME's) to contribute to the country's industrialisation process.
He noted that about 70 per cent of all industrial establishments, 85 per cent of employment in the manufacturing sector and to a large extent the overall employment growth were in the SMEs Sector.
Mr Asiedu made the call at a ceremony to mark the 15th anniversary celebration of the Africa Industrialisation Day and the inauguration of the SPX-Ghana Project - Subcontracting and Partnership Exchange, Matchmaking Fair in Accra.
The SPX- Ghana- Project- is intended to bring to the fore the productive capabilities of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises to establish business links with large companies.
The day which had the theme: "Strengthening Productive Capacity for Poverty Reduction Within the Framework of NEPAD" is observed to bring into focus how African countries could sustain industrial development to catch up with the rest of the world.
Mr Asiedu said although the SMEs had made enormous contributions to make to industrial output and export earnings, it still had the potential to do better.
He said SMEs had the potential of creating jobs at relatively low cost and were resilient to external shocks and foreign exchange fluctuations.
The Deputy Minister observed that the full potentials of the SMEs had not been realized due to problems such as limited access to finance, poor quality of products, obsolete equipments and lack of essential managerial and entrepreneurial skills.
Furthermore the competitive pressures resulting from globalisation and liberalization were putting severe strains on SMEs on domestic and international markets, he said.
Mr Asiedu said the problem had been exacerbated by rapid change in technology and emerging dominant presence of Information and Communication Technology (ICT).
He urged the SMEs to improve on standards, set forth-strategic areas to implement assets and identify suitable partners where sustainable win-win situations might be anticipated.
Mr Prince Kofi Kludjeson, President of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), said many companies in the country suffered from the inability to capture market opportunities and business service networking.
He, therefore, asked companies to update information, technology, training and networking to achieve better skills to improve productivity, adding: "An efficient industrial subcontracting and partnership exchange and networking system is part of the solution to the problem."
Mr Kludjeson said the various linkages that small and medium sized industries could establish among themselves and with the large and state-owned enterprises were essential factors for their growth and competitiveness.