23 Jul 2019

Batswana businesses funded by Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency (CEDA) have been commended for fulfilling agreement with the agency in repaying their loans which in turn enabled CEDA to fund even more applicants.

Addressing a kgotla meeting in Nata, minister of investment, trade and industry, Ms Bogolo Kenewendo said over the years CEDA had failed to meet its target of collecting P400 million in loan re-payments, but this year the agency surpassed the target, collecting almost P520 million.

She said it was commendable that  Batswana honoured their obligations of servicing their loans with CEDA, which would  enable the lending agency to fund more budding Batswana entrepreneurs.

The minister said the trade ministry appreciated such efforts, noting it enabled CEDA to serve them better and come up with new strategies and developments to benefit them even more. 

Further, she said Batswana should understand that success in trade and investment was not about government only, but their responsibility as well as they form part of the investment chain. 

Ms Kenewendo said as such that the ministry had embarked on a   drive to improve how it does business and ease doing business for investors and businesses people. 

She noted that as from June this year they introduced online company registration and so far they had received positive feedback from Batswana that have used the service.

She said the move was a positive development which they intended to improve to reach out to as many customers as possible even those without access to the internet, adding they planned to introduce mobile registration system to enable mobile phone users to register companies with ease.

She highlighted that the ministry would table amendments to the industry development and trade bill which would make changes to enable people to easily establish businesses. 

She thus implored Batswana to take advantage of the changes to uplift lives and help government create employment for other Batswana. ENDS