19 Dec 2019

Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency (CEDA) has received 609 loan applications valued at P305 312 792.02 for Mahalapye Sub-district since its inception.

Answering a question in Parliament,

Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry, Ms Peggy Serame said the areas covered included Mahalapye East, Mahalapye West, Shoshong and Sefhare Ramokgonami.
She explained that of the 609 received applications, 345 applications valued at P201 403 857.21 were approved.

Of the 345 approved applications, 146 applications valued at P83 874 760.00 were from Mahalapye only.
Ms Serame said businesses experienced different types of challenges at their different stages of their cycles, adding that challenges included amongst others, licensing prerequisites, market challenges, lack of business skills and technical expertise, natural disasters especially with agribusiness projects and late payments from procuring entities and project mismanagement by promoters.
She said to promote business linkages; CEDA was in partnership with other government agencies such as the Local Enterprise Authority,  

Botswana Agricultural Marketing Board and Botswana Institute for Technology Research and Innovation.
The agency, she said had a dedicated Business Advisory Unit, whose responsibility was to assist and handhold businesses during their lifetime through pre-appraisal mentoring was done during loan assessment.

The minister said implementation of mentoring was mainly done to assist in the business set up so as to ensure that business process and controls were in place.
She said experience had shown that financial management among promoters, was one of the key skills that the agency gave attention to.
Ms Serame said the agency also had a fully-fledged restructuring unit, which reviews projects that were struggling with the intention to review the funding structure to give them an opportunity to turn around.
Mahalapye West MP, Mr David Tshere had wanted the minister to state the number of CEDA applications received in the Mahalapye Sub-district since inception as well as the number of those approved from Mahalapye West Constituency, the challenges and proposed remedies. ends