Gov’t to support creative sector with GH¢50 million CapBuss fund – Finance Minister

The Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta has announced that the creative sector will receive financial support from the government for the next six months.

While presenting the Mid-year Budget Review before parliament on Thursday, July 23, 2020, he said this money will be taken from the CappBus Fund.

According to him, the government is going to “increase the CapBuss Programme by GH¢150 million to, among others, facilitate credit of GH¢50 million to support the Creative Arts, the Media and the Conference of Independent Universities.”

This comes after the announcement of a 9 million dollar stimulus support for Small and Medium Scale Enterprises to be taken from the $40 million dollar Tourism Development Project Fund given to Ghana by the World Bank.

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, a lot of creative artists have complained about the untold burden it has left on their business.

There have been a lot of calls on the government to provide some financial assistance to the sector.

Most stakeholders of the Creative Arts sector have also remonstrated the delay in the establishment of the Creative Arts Fund.

However, during the Creative Arts Forum in December last year, the Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture, Barbara Oteng Gyasi explained that while they await the passage of the Creative Arts Bill and consequently the Fund, the government had asked for Exim Bank to provide GHS 10 million loan to the sector.