269 YOUTH IN RUN FOR E7M FUNDING

MBABANE – The race is on.  A total of 269 members of the youth are in competition to get a slice in the E7 million ‘cake’ which has been availed by the Youth Enterprise Revolving Fund (YERF) as credit to either start or upgrade their businesses.

These applications were received from the Emaswati between ages of 18 to 35 years old during the period of August and September 2018.
YERF Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Bhekizwe Maziya explained that the received credit applications were mostly agri-business (37 per cent), services (20 per cent), hospitality (12 per cent), manufacturing (10 per cent) and retail (nine per cent) among others.

Granted

The CEO disclosed that the loans had not been granted yet.
He mentioned that at this stage, they had only completed the screening process and forwarded the applicants’ details and documentation to the Industrial Development Corporation of Eswatini (IDCE) for a viability assessment.

Soon after completion of the IDCE assessment, recommendations will be sent back to YERF for approval by the Board of directors prior to the issuance of loans within a period of two months to the beneficiaries yet to be determined. 

Lending

IDCE and YEF entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which entails financing applications beyond their lending limits and determining feasibility of the proposed business ideas.

Maximum

YERF lends up to E50 000 for individuals, a maximum of E100 000 for companies and does not exceed E150 000 when financing cooperatives.   
Maziya pointed out that there had to be a lot of ‘cleaning’ which had to be done on the received applications.

This was more so because some of the business proposals received were viable but lacked crucial documentation such as market need, market trends and cashflow.

“YEF does not decline applications but rather defers them for re-submission after loopholes which were pointed out during evaluation have been addressed,” clarified Maziya.

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