10 Oct 2018

Youth Development Fund (YDF) is owed approximately P400 million in uncollected loan repayments from beneficiaries.

This was revealed by the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Youth Empowerment, Sport and Culture Development Mr Kago Ramokate during the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) sitting on Tuesday.

Mr Ramokate said many businesses funded through YDF were failing to repay their loans.  

The YDF was introduced by government in the 2009/10 financial year as a 50 perc ent grant, 50 per cent loan scheme to encourage out-of-school, marginalised and unemployed youth to venture into sustainable and viable income-generating projects.

Mr Ramokate said his ministry disbursed around P114 million to fund youth-owned projects annually hoping to recover the loan aspect when the businesses become sustainable. He however explained that ‘At the moment we do not have any plans to force them to repay the loans. What we are working on is identifying those that are doing well and making sure we get close to them in terms of how they operate and ensure that they pay.

We are quite aware of the option for measures that may put pressure on them, but we have not yet adopted any of those measures yet,” said the permanent secretary.

Mr Ramokate said they always impress upon their beneficiaries the importance of being accountable and responsible.

He further said his ministry was in the process of collecting information and putting together all records of projects they have funded.

He said they expect to have completed that information collation exercise early next year.

He said while some of the projects they have funded have collapsed, most of them were still operational.

He said the survival rate of the projects stood at 86 per cent since inception. “We are working with some collapsed projects to try to resuscitate them and have them operate.

For others that do not present any hope of continuing to operate we have moved to recover all the items from the beneficiaries,” he said.

In other issues pertaining to the ministry, Mr Ramokate explained that the national library project, which was conceived in 1999, would not be constructed during NDP 11 due to budgetary constraints. The projects was also deferred about 10 years ago due to the financial crisis. Ends