GUTA's Pearl Opoku Urges Lowering Costs for Women-led Business Registration

Pearl Opoku, Women's Wing’s Coordinator at Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA) has urged organisation registrars to lower the fees which are related to registering women-led businesses across the country.

Pearl emphasises on the step saying that it would streamline the women-led MSMEs formalisation process while allowing them to take the benefit afforded to formal businesses. This shall aid them in accessing the credit since it’s one of the crucial hurdles for them. Additionally, she recommended the women entrepreneurs to put forward proper bookkeeping practices in order to intensify the operation’s lucidity in addition to productivity.

She exclaimed, “Let us take advantage and formalise our businesses. I would like to appeal to the Registrar of Companies to reduce the cost of business registration to encourage MSMEs to register, especially those owned by women.”

Moreover, Dr. Joseph Obeng, the President of GUTA said to the journalists about the significance of establishing a wing solely dedicated towards women within the organisation. He emphasised on the role women play in trading sector in addition to broader economy while highlighting the need of transforming them to a formalised business structure from the informal sector.

In the meantime, GEA (Ghana Enterprises Authority) granted GHC500,000 in order to assist the GUTA’s women’s wing of Ashanti Region. Kosi Yankey Aryeh, the CEO of GEA remarks that this funding primary focus is to strengthen the association’s activities along with enhancing institutional capacity.

She says in her statement, “We have come up with a new programme under the markets access for sustainable and inclusive development because you cannot develop or build MSMEs when they have nowhere to sell. In view of this, we have decided to support a lot of associations that help us in job creation.”

While continuing, she said, "The funding is to provide institutional strengthening to the associations to put in place the right structures to recruit the right finance support teams to be able to bring the right personnel to support it.”