Where are the 20,000 jobs created?

Analysts have raised questions over the purported 20,000 jobs created by the Ministry of Business Development over the past 14 months.

Available information to the B&FT shows that about 2,000 businesses have been trained in the Northern Ashanti, Brong Ahafo, Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions through the National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Plan (NEIP), the lead government agency.

Minister for Business Development, Mohammed Awal, in an interview with an Accra-based radio station categorically stated that 20,000 jobs have been created under his ministry in the past year, and that 7,000 businesses have been trained through the National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Plan (NEIP) Business plan competition.

On Monday 23^rd April 2018, the CEO of NEIP, Mr. John Kumah, in an interview with Accra-based Citi FM sought to rationalise that the 20,000 jobs stated by the Minister were based on the assumption that of the 7,000 businesses purported to have been trained, each will averagely employ three persons. 

“Job creation is a systematic and thought-through series of interventions which culminate in building viable and sustainable businesses which can then open their doors to recruit. So, for the Ministry of Business Development to assert that 20,000 jobs have been created because of a single training is very misleading,” a prominent entrepreneur who wanted to remain anonymous said.

He added that: “In what appears to be continuous mis-steps and short-sightedness by government, laudable projects like the NEIP - if existing challenges are not addressed - may end up like the Youth Enterprise Support (YES) programme under the former government".

Under YES, the then-government provided a seed fund of GH¢10million for entrepreneurship development - but the programme became a disgrace to government as it used functionaries to implement the programme instead of credible private sector players. In the end, businesses which took soft loans from YES have not refunded and hardly any success stories can be told from the initiative.

So, it came as a relief to the business community and development partners that this time around the NEIP project was going to be private sector-led. True to government’s words, the Minister of Finance in his annual 2018 budget recognised the fact that a tender process had taken place with 13 companies and one had emerged successful.

John Kumah, during the radio interview, however asserted that the British Council had been partnered to provide a standardised training and use business hubs across the country to provide training for all 7,000 businesses which applied for the business plan competition, although the process had started somewhere late last year and stalled for lack of funding.

A series of documents sighted by BF&T show that new companies and organisations, including the British Council and business hubs, are in the process of signing a series of Memoranda of Understanding between them and NEIP for the same work to be done - though they did not go through the initial tender from our checks at the Ministry of Business Development. This raises issues of sole-sourcing.