At least R200m to be injected in small businesses

Business /12 May 2022, 11:33am/ Thabiso Ndobo

Minister of Small Businesses Development, Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams:image supplied

Bloemfontein: The minister of Small Businesses Development, Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, says her department will inject at least R200 million worth of funding to small businesses in each of the nine provinces in the country.

According to Ndabeni-Abrahams, her department was confident there will be equitable fund flow across all provinces.

The minister was delivering a budget of Small Business Development on Tuesday.

She told the plenary that finalization of the funding policy by her department will open doors for funding of small businesses, which often struggle to get funding from commercial banks.

“Our work here is aimed at reducing the prevailing credit gap estimated to be R346bn, honorable members. That is the gap in funding SMMEs in SA,” said Ndabeni-Abrahams.

The minister added that, “Through the Small Enterprise Finance Agency (Sefa) we will prioritize building a sustainable loan [scheme] through the expansion of credit and decreasing impairments. We are also building on the success we have had with credit guarantees which have been able to leverage additional monies from private banking and non-banking financial intermediaries.

She said they will deliberate in building a sustainable, black-owned financial intermediary base which is critical to the success of black people. The minister also said they are increasing measures to access rural and townships through improving their visibility.

She added that, “It will be slightly more for the poorer rural provinces such as Limpopo, Free State, North West, Eastern Cape, Mpumalanga and Northern Cape. We are deliberate about redress and we can’t apologize,”

The funding allocated for the 2022/23 financial year is expected to support 84,831 SMMEs and co-operatives. It is also expected to help in the creation of 104,968 jobs.

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