“YouStart”: All you need to know about government’s planned solution to unemployment

Policy is the action and in-action of a government in power. It is always, the aim of every government in power to create more jobs for its citizenry to reduce unemployment rate in the country. 

The unemployment rate in Ghana is on the high side as hundreds of thousands of graduates churn out by the many universities are unable to get jobs and therefore the Government saw the need to initiate “YouStart”.

The New Patriotic Government has come up with an initiative called “Government’s YouStart Policy”. The aim of this policy is to help young people start and grow small businesses.

According to the Minister of Finance, the policy is aimed at creating one million jobs with a seed capital of GHs1billion and would take effect from March 2022. This was announced at the 2022 budget presentation in parliament by the Minister of Finance Mr. Ken Ofori-Atta.

The policy will be under the Ghana Enterprise Agency (GEA), the National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme (NEIP), and partner finance institutions.

YouStart policy will provide the youth with:

Training in Skills Development, Entrepreneurial Support, and Business Advisory services.

Funding in terms of access to Competitive Credit and Starter Packs.

Enterprise Promotion in Monitoring and Access to Markets.

In making the Government’s YouStart Policy accessible to all Ghanaian youths, the initiators of the policy said the youths who will be captured under the programme will benefit from district level loans under Ghs10, 000 after 2-3 months of training and soft loans of up to GHs50, 000 to help start-ups.

For every Government to achieve its targeted goals or policies, decentralization is key as it brings the government of the day close to the door-steps of the local people. This is exactly what the Government’s YouStart Policy is taking into account.

SOURCE : Coverghana.com.gh