The Ministry of Trade and Industry with support from the ECOWAS Commission has distributed tablets to 20 cross-border importers to help them operate more formally in this digitalised era.
Having undergone some training, the gadget is expected to help the importers, who are women, to organize their information on storage, cash flow, among other things, in order to help them trade competitively.
Speaking at the ECOWAS Cross-Border Cooperation Women In Development Network project in Accra, a Deputy Minister of Trade, Nana Ama Dokua Asiamah-Adjei, explained that the gesture was a pilot phase of an initiative carried out by her outfit to empower micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), especially importers.
She disclosed that the importers had been carefully picked from different sectors and geographical areas within the country to commence the initiative.
The Deputy Trade Minister noted that women engaged in cross-border trade had challenges organizing their trade information, which denies them access to trade finance.
“These gadgets will enable them to take advantage of the new era. In the past, we supported traders with bookkeeping and other things, but today we would want them to also take advantage of the digitalized era. We would want them to be able to have contact, and they wouldn’t need to travel to wherever they are importing their cargo from,” she said.
“With these gadgets, hopefully, they’ll be able to operate in a more formal way than they usually were operating. The end goal is to be able to build a particular platform for them to be able to advertise and then also sell their goods and know how to be able to source their products, know how to be able to keep their rights records, to help with their recordkeeping to solve problems of trade finance,” Mrs Asiamah-Adjei added.
New dawn
The Deputy Minister also pointed to shift in the way things are done, especially in an election year citing instances where T-shirts are usually distributed to traders during engagements.
“But here, it’s on a different tangent. Although we are in the political season, it is more of a professional program that we are having now and we intend to uphold it to the latter,” she said.
Mrs Asiamah-Adjei stressed that “we want the ordinary trader to have as much information stored, so much that it’s even easier to get some access to finance when required. It will be easier to get access to investors even when required and this is the reason why we have come this far.”
Response
Pearl Poku, Coordinator of the Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA) Women’s Wing, expressed gratitude to the Minister for the gesture.
She referred to the impact the Trade Ministry has had on the women such as gadgets to back up their businesses, and efforts to facilitate trade finance for her members.
“We are so overtaken by this and we promise her that being the pilot scheme with the first 20 people, we will not disappoint. We’ll make sure we use whatever resources we have to the fullest for them to know that traders of yesterday are not traders of today. (1:29) She’s taking us through the lines. Traders of today, we can say we are educated on the path of trading,” Madam Poku said.
