A training on bookkeeping and banking culture has been organised for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the Sagnarigu Municipality of the Northern Region to hone their skills to improve their operations.

The training is under the auspices of the Business Resource Centre of the Sagnarigu Municipal Assembly and a total of 800 SMEs, who are into agribusiness, manufacturing, services and trading in the municipality.

They have been put into groups where each group will go through the training in a day, and within the next three weeks, all of them will be trained.

Mr Abdul-Rahaman Dawda, General Manager of the Business Resource Centre, Sagnarigu Municipal Assembly, who briefed the Ghana News Agency (GNA) about the training at Sagnarigu, said the training became necessary after it was observed that the SMEs lacked managerial skills to boost their operations.

Mr Dawda said "These are SMEs, who have come to register their businesses with the Sagnarigu Municipal Business Resource Centre. So, we have done diagnosis on their businesses and we have observed that most of them lack managerial skills."

He said "we are providing managerial services to them to boost their skills in their entrepreneurship. So, we are doing bookkeeping training and banking culture so they can have bank accounts to record their savings at the banks. And we want them to have records of all activities they do in their businesses."

He was optimistic that the training would boost the skills and techniques of the beneficiary SMEs in their various businesses, adding "This can boost the local economy."

Mr Dawda spoke about the importance of the SMEs in the business sector saying "Government has observed that the only way to grow the economy is through private sector participation and has industrialisation policy and using the Business Resource Centres as one of the steps to realise the industrialisation agenda."

He added that "So, we are working to grow the SMEs. We hope that after the training, SMEs will be equipped to do their businesses better and to increase their profits and this should help grow the economy."

He said "One of our key mandates is to facilitate funding for SMEs. So, all our clients, who need funds, we will facilitate for them to get funds after the training through our participating financial institutions."

He called on all SMEs operating in the area to register their businesses with the office to receive support to improve their businesses.

Madam Rashida Abubakari, a dealer in general merchants, who was part of the trainees, said most of the SMEs did not write down activities they undertook as part of their businesses and they often forgot their transactions leading to loss of revenue.

She lauded the training and said writing or keeping records of their activities would help, in the sense that, they would not forget any of their transactions especial those that they sold items to on credit.