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The Microfinance and Small Loans Centre (MASLOC) is to disburse GH�35million to businesses under its small-scale credit loan schemes, beginning 2012. The Centre intends to support the production value-chain through the provision of loans and, in collaboration with Ghana Export Promotion Council, find markets for agro-processed products and the fishing sector. �As of July 2011, GH�15.2million had been disbursed to 31,793 customers as loans; and with close monitoring, the Centre successfully recovered 95 percent of the loans disbursed as at June 2011. �The Centre has installed new software and trained credit-officers to inject professionalism into its operations,� disclosed Mrs. Bertha Ansah-Djan, Chief Executive Officer. Speaking at a media interaction in Accra, she said: �The management adopted a multi-faceted loan-recovery and prudent approach to salvage the old loans which have yielded 99.5 percent success against the 6.63 percent recovered under the previous administration. Management is committed to sustenance of the recovery efforts.� She said MASLOC will increase its disbursements to cover all regions and districts throughout the country and continue with the decentralisation of its lending operations, emphasising that it will continue to encourage groups to form credit unions and inculcate in them a saving culture. She disclosed that management will roll-out a new scheme to partner a company that is ready to fund the cost of farm inputs, agro-processing machinery, and sewing machines for hire-purchase by qualified beneficiaries' �As a result of the management�s efforts, the threat of MASLOC becoming bankrupt is now a thing of the past,� she remarked. MASLOC's facilities are principally targetted at the marginalised productive poor, who fall mostly within the micro-, small- and medium-enterprise sector which comprises women, the physically challenged and the youth. As at 2008, approximately 279,000 micro-entrepreneurs had benefitted from the micro-finance scheme. MASLOC was introduced in 2004 in collaboration with the World Bank, with nine new regional offices launched in September, 2006. Under the scheme, individuals, groups and businesses are eligible to apply for loans between GH�100,000 and GH�250,000. Groups need to have a minimum of five and maximum of 25 members to access up to GH�250,000. Each member of the group can access GH�10,000, refundable within one year with 10 percent interest. Other categories of borrowers who can access loans from GH�20,000 up to GH�250,000 attract the going Bank of Ghana prime interest rate.