Professor John Gartchie Gatsi, a Chartered Economist and Barrister at the University of Cape Coast, says the National Democratic Congress (NDC) policy to establish a Women Development Bank is a strategic move to elevate Ghana’s economy to a sustainable level.
He said Women Development Bank is an intentional strategy to economically empower women in the country to help them get access to long-term credits at either zero interest or lower interest rates than commercial banks.
Professor Gatsi added that the concept of the Women’s Development Bank is not new globally. It has been introduced in countries such as India to internationally support women entrepreneurs to create and sustain enterprises and to deal with poverty.
It has been established that generally, micro small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) established and managed by women have the chance of survival to grow and provide jobs.
This comes after Professor Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang, the running mate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), reiterated the party’s commitment to establishing a Women’s Development Bank if they win the upcoming elections.
The Economist stated in a LinkedIn post after the launch of NDC’s manifesto that, the Women Development Bank will be part of growing the participation of women in enterprises and scaling up their contribution to economic growth and job creation.
He said development banks in general are different from commercial banks. They later grant mostly short-term loans with high interest rates putting the burden on recipients. This creates a great interest burden and difficulty for the growth of businesses.
Professor Gatsi explained that the best way to reduce poverty drastically is through the provision of development credits to women entrepreneurs.
“Since the Women Development Bank is a special class of development bank, it normally receives seed money from international development and financial institutions, domestic government, foreign governments, foundations, and NGOs”, he added.
He said there are people who are concerned about the zero-interest or low-interest charge by indicating concern about the survival of the bank.
“We have even seen some lending development facilities in agriculture and other sectors through the normal commercial banks. In such a case the interest rates are very low. So the setup and operation of a development bank is different from that of a commercial bank. The zero interest loan portfolios of the development bank will attract interest from Islamic Development bank”.
