Industry, Commerce and Service

The industrial sector in the Municipal is less developed. There are currently no large industrial holdings in the district. The sector is currently characterized by small scale businesses and employs only about 8% of the active labour force. The service and commerce sector in the Atebubu-Amantin Municipal employs about 22% of the local active labour force and contributes about 25% of their income.

The commercial sector is dominated by activities in the retail and (a limited) wholesale in agricultural and industrial goods such as raw agricultural produce, food vendoring, household consumables, chemical shops, and electrical shops. On the other hand, the services sector is dominated by small scale operators in activities such as telecommunication services, hair dressing and barbering, electronic repairs, vehicle repairs and footwear repairs.

Small Scale Operators

The MUNICIPAL has a number of small scale industries which are widespread throughout the district. They can be categorised broadly as, service industries and agro-processing industries. They include cassava flour processing, mushroom growing, bee keeping, gari-processing, soap making, batik tie and dye making, carpentry, metal work, pomade production, and services like hair dressing, dressmaking, etc.

This sector employs about 8% of the active population who are mostly found in the two urban settlements – Atebubu and Amantin. About five of these small scale operators have registered with the Registrar General’s Department while others have not yet done so. Majority of these operators are women who range between the ages of 20 and 40 years. Majority of those in the small scale industrial sector (80%) are also engaged in other income earning activities such as farming, trading or are formally employed.

Many of them have benefited from various training programmes and financial support from institutions in the Municipal such as Business Advisory Centre (BAC), Department of Agriculture (MOFA), Department of Cooperatives and World Vision International. However, many of them still need more training on business management, entrepreneurial, financial and marketing skills to enable them enhance their productivity.

Some of the constraints currently facing the small scale enterprises include inadequate funds to start up or expand their business operations.  Majority (56%) of the small scale operators do not have access to loans to invest in their operations. There is also a problem of high interest rates, especially for those who access loans from the banks. This is partly due to the fact that, most of these traders are not in groups and therefore make access to loans somehow tedious due to their individualistic approach to accessing the loan from the banks.

This problem has seriously affected businesses, by preventing them from growing and expanding to meet the market demand. The implications of these problems have been a slow and limited growth of the small scale industries. There is therefore the need to increase access to credit with reasonable interest rate within the district, which among other things, improve the expansion and production capacities of the small scale industries to meet the market demand and eventually graduate into bigger enterprises.