The CEO of Wear Ghana, Awurabena Agyeman says young Ghanaian Entrepreneurs are not only interested in financial investments but are interested in what she calls smart capital investments.

Responding to why Ghanaian businesses prefer debts to equity in their quest for funding, she said, “It is not just the money we are looking for, we are looking for smart capital as well, money that will come with some expertise which is what type you will get in such arrangements but we also want some fairness.”

She made the comments during the second edition of the development finance series at the research and consultancy Centre of the University of Professional Studies.

Awurabena Agyeman also urged the Finance Ministry to ensure that the yet-to-be-established Development Bank Ghana provides credit to young entrepreneurs to help them grow their businesses.

On his part, Dr Emmanuel Debrah, a Finance Lecturer at UPSA in his contribution said all development banks have collapsed due to poor corporate governance and wondered what different the government will do to ensure the success of the new bank.

“When I heard of the Development Bank, what came to mind was all the development banks Nkrumah built. All of them are no more. The question is what have we learnt from there to guide the sustainability of the yet to be operational Development Bank, Ghana…Research has shown that all development banks in the past collapsed due to poor corporate governance,” Dr Debrah noted.

But in a response on the same platform, the Director of the financial sector division of the Finance Ministry, Sampson Akligoh, assured that government is plugging all loopholes to ensure the Development Bank Ghana (GDB) becomes a success.

He added that the diversity of the partners working with government to establish the bank is a testament to its sustainability.

“Typically, the way the bank was set up under the Companies Act gives us some level of immunity so in that case, we don’t have direct political involvement.

"Secondly, we have done all that we can to make sure that recruitment is done through an independent process,” Mr Akligoh said.

The Government of Ghana in partnership with the European Investment Bank, and other international development institutions have committed to the establishment of a new development finance institution – Development Bank Ghana - to provide patient capital for Ghana’s industrialisation agenda.