The Grants Management Committee of the Adwumawura Programme has begun a nationwide pitching exercise for beneficiaries to present business ideas for grants to support their enterprises.

The sessions are taking place in all 16 regions, involving beneficiaries from the 261 Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs).

A statement issued by the National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme (NEIP) said the exercise would enable selected youth-owned businesses that had undergone a five-week entrepreneurship capacity-building programme to pitch their ideas to a panel of experts.

It said the training focused on entrepreneurship and how to start and grow businesses.

The statement said after the nationwide pitching exercise, at least 2,000 viable, scalable and impactful businesses with the potential to create decent jobs would receive financial and input grants.

It said the Grants Management Committee, inaugurated by the Minister of Youth Development and Empowerment, was mandated to select innovative, viable, scalable and impactful businesses from 10,887 enterprises supported under the Adwumawura Programme.

The statement said the Committee was established to ensure that grant disbursement under the programme was equitable, merit-based, and impactful.

The Committee urged beneficiaries to exercise patience during the rigorous selection process to ensure that businesses chosen for the grants were viable and scalable to deliver the required economic impact.

“Because these best-practice approach of selecting benificiaries is in line with the RESET agenda,” it said.

The statement said the programme required the Committee to rigorously select beneficiaries who could prudently and efficiently utilise the grants to create decent and sustainable jobs for the youth.

It said the Committee was committed to selecting impactful, viable and scalable youth-owned businesses to receive the grants.

The statement added that the next step would be the award of grants to at least 2,000 viable, scalable and impactful youth-owned businesses.