Promoting enterprises in the wood products subsector in Ghana

Opoku-Afriyie

Woodworking microenterprises and small businesses (MSEs) have not benefited from structural adjustment policies in Ghana where export orientation gives relatively few enterprises better access to the raw material base as well as the financial and enterprise support infrastructure. The
subsector approach to small enterprise promotion is used in this article to explore the effects of export production and related factors on the emergence of opportunities and constraints facing MSEs. On this basis, it is determined that export production is a major factor influencing the supply
of wood to woodworking MSEs, that a large number of MSEs could partake in the opportunities presented by the production of value-added products for export overseas, and that policy and project intervention to promote enterprises in the subsector could be more effective if they fostered greater
links between enterprises producing for the domestic market and those producing for export.