BY MTHANDAZO NYONI
THE Empowerbank has to date disbursed over ZWL$2,7 million in loans to young entrepreneurs across the country, with another ZWL$5,4 million in applications still under consideration, an official has said.
The bank, which was launched by government last year to provide financial services to the youth, is capitalised to the tune of ZWL$12,5 million.
“To date, the bank has disbursed above ZWL$2,7 million loans, with a total value of ZWL$5,4 million loan applications under various stages of the evaluation process. This comprises various loan products the bank offers to individuals, groups, micro enterprises, SMEs, value chain financing and schemes,” the bank’s head of marketing and communications, Christina Muchekeza told NewsDay recently.
“The loan book is largely skewed towards agriculture, given that our country is an agro-based economy. Some of the loans are in the form of value chain financing which has been a key driver for us to achieve the financial inclusion mandate, as these involve farmers right down to the grassroots, which are considered marginalised.”
The value chain funding model ensured guaranteed supply lines and markets for the projects funded.
“Given that our youth are widely dispersed around the country, the bank has a working model that identifies schemes, youth associations and groups, which allows us to reach a wider number of the youth at any given time irrespective of their location,” Muchekeza said.
She said they had also started working in conjunction with the youth desks under the Agriculture and Climate ministry as well as the Mines ministry in identifying opportunities for youth empowerment.
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“These ministries have more insight on what’s on the ground when it comes to young farmers and miners,” she said.
“Added to that, we have our financial inclusion teams that move around provinces, where the bank is not well represented, carrying out training workshops and identifying young people that qualify for funding. (Through) all its initiatives, the bank has managed to reach out to more than 35 000 young people,” Muchekeza said.
“The bank is actively participating in addressing the challenges of financial inclusion in the country in order to bring the previously unbanked and unrecorded micro enterprises into the mainstream economy,” Muchekeza said.
“We are encouraged by these great strides in reaching out to the market as evidenced by the growth in the loan book and if we continue with this trajectory, we will be on target come year end 2019.”
She said a lot of ground has been covered in engaging the market with the product range offered by the bank as well as clarifying concerns regarding collateral.
“The bank has various flexible collateral measures in place to ensure that our youths are not disqualified (on the basis) of lack of collateral. We focus on project viability and its capacity to create employment when assessing their loan applications,” Muchekeza said.
“This collateral issue has been demystified through continuous engagement with the target market and more youths are now coming forward with projects for funding.”
