Western Regional Minister Urges Youths To Take Part Of The ‘YOUSTART’ Initiative.
The Western Regional Minister Hon. Kwabena Okyere Darko is advising youths in Sekondi Takoradi to take part in Government’s entrepreneurial initiative called Youstart which will offer opportunities for them to create their own jobs.
According to him, the government is keen on resolving unemployment rates in the country and as such, has doubled employment in the public sector by 681,000.
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Hon Okyere Darko however assured that all hope is not lost for the unemployed youths in the region and encouraged them to venture into entrepreneurship.
About YOUSTART
As part of efforts to address the high youth unemployment rate in Ghana, Government announced an ambitious entrepreneurial programme in the 2022 budget known as YouStart, with the objective of building an entrepreneurial nation and creating at least 1 million jobs for the youth in the next 3 years (2022 – 2025). The YouStart programme is a vehicle through which Government intends to provide funding and technical support to the youth (18-40 years) and youth-led businesses to assist them to start, building and growing their own businesses.
The programme is benchmarked against similar successful models in the world including the Small Business Administration (SBA) in the US and the British Business Bank, UK.
Through this programme, Government intends to commit about GHS10 billion over the next 3 years towards the creation of at least a million jobs in the economy. This will be achieved using part of the proceeds from the Electronic Transaction Levy (e-Levy) and other funding sources as such the World Bank, IFC, MasterCard, select PFIs and other DFIs.
The YouStart programme forms part of the GHS100 billion Ghana Cares “ObaatanPa” programme which was launched by the Government in November 2020 to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, return the country to a sustained path of robust growth and to create a stronger, more resilient and transformed economy.