05 Aug 2019

Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are important in driving the economy, Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry, Ms Bogolo Kenewendo has said.

When officially opening the Barclays Bank of Botswana Limited Enterprise Development Centre in Gaborone recently, Ms Kenewendo said there was need to focus on SMEs.

She congratulated Barclays Bank for the initiative and for being the most trusted, valuable and valued partner for development and diversification.

She highlighted that development of SMEs was crucial in export led development.

“As a ministry we want a pipeline of starting up these businesses and ensuring that they have market access, not only domestically, but to also ensure that they are able to export,” said Ms Kenewendo.

For her part, the Managing Director of Barclays Bank of Botswana Limited, Ms Keabetswe Pheko-Moshagane said the opening of the centre followed a successful launch of the enterprise development programme in November 2017, which sought to give SMEs access to markets, as well as business and financial support.

She said the centre was designed to give SME clients working space, with access to a boardroom, dedicated work stations, Wi-Fi and printing facilities.

“Our commitment and support for entrepreneurship is based on our share growth strategy, which informs our citizenship agenda and focuses on three pillars; education and skills, enterprise development and financial inclusion,” said Ms Pheko-Moshagane. She emphasised that the SME sector had proven to be an important driver of economic growth and employment creation across the world. In this regard, she said Botswana  was not an exception, as research has shown that nearly 90 per cent of all registered businesses were SMEs and employed over 300 000 people both formally and informally. 

Ms Pheko-Moshagane pointed out that the Enterprise Supply-chain Development (ESD) programme opened up the supply chains of large corporates for the benefit of SMEs, as well as providing bespoke financial and entrepreneurship support and this was all done to facilitate sustainable business enterprises.

She stated that to date, nine clients from various industries, had benefited from the ESD programme, and in turn provided much needed employment for over 150 Batswana.

Barclays Botswana acting business banking director, Ms Keletso Setimela said the bank, was in a unique position to use its assets to offer value chain financing solutions as well as provide an enabling environment to SMEs.  Ms Setimela explained that the centre, located along Old Lobatse Road in Gaborone, would be open on Monday-Friday between 8am and 5pm. Ends