The National Lottery Authority has made an impressive donation of GHS 10 million to support Government’s YouStart initiative.
The donation was made to the Ministry of Finance, the sector responsible for spearheading this flagship government initiative.
YouStart aims to create some 1 million jobs for the youth in a space of three years.
Speaking at the short presentation ceremony, the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, said the YouStart initiative would be a vehicle for supporting young entrepreneurs to gain access to capital, training, technical skills, and mentoring to enable them to launch and operate their own businesses.
The Minister also revealed that local banks in the country have agreed to increase their SME portfolio up to GHC5 billion over the next 3 years.
Ken Ofori-Atta said the initiative will be implemented by the Ghana Enterprises Agency (GEA), the National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme (NEIP), and partner financial institutions.
Hon Ken Ofori-Atta stated young people under the program will benefit from District Level Loans under 10,000 GHC after 2-3 months of training and Soft loans of up to GH¢50,000 to help start-ups (in particular by young graduates from and school-leavers) and small businesses to expand.
The Director-General of the NLA, Mr. Sammi Awuku emphasized that his outfit was fully committed to pushing government’s development agenda through the good causes foundation.
On his part, the board chairman for NLA Togbe (Hon) Francis Albert Seth Nyonyo further assured the NLA’s Board’s support and commitments to the management of NLA to help increase revenue for the year 2022 under review.
YouStart is an ambitious plan by Government to leverage entrepreneurship to create 1 million jobs in the next 3 years by providing youth access to capital, market linkages, mentoring among several others to aid them in starting or expanding their businesses.
