08 Mar 2020

Parliament has been informed that in the past three financial years government had disbursed P360 million towards Youth Development Fund (YDF).

Youth Empowerment, Sport and Culture Development assistant minister, Mr Buti Billy said out of the total budget, over P341 million was disbursed towards approved projects. Under the same period, Mr Billy said over P321 million was disbursed towards funding YDF approved projects while an amount exceeding P20 million was used to fund capacity building for beneficiaries and other special projects related to the fund.

Mr Billy said over P18 million of the total budget disbursed for the past three financial years was not spent. He further revealed that over the past three financial years, YDF financed 3 050 youth businesses and in the process created an average of 6 100 employment opportunities.

Since the inception of YDF in 2009 until the end of the 2018/19 financial year, Mr Billy said over P25 million was collected as loan repayment from the beneficiaries.

As for Mmadinare constituency, Mr Billy said 160 youth had benefited through YDF since its inception. He added that under the current financial year of 2019/2020, 16 applicants from Mmadinare constituency had been approved.

To date, Mr Billy said under the current financial year, 948 applications had been approved, 505 of which projects had been funded. In addition, he said, the processing of funding the approved projects was still ongoing, while the process of disbursing funds for the YDF-funded projects was also currently affected by the glitches of the Government Accounting and Budgeting System (GABS).

The assistant minister was responding to a question from the MP for Mmadinare, Mr Molebatsi Molebatsi, who had asked the Minister of Youth Empowerment, Sport and Culture Development to state total amount disbursed by government towards YDF for the past three financial years.

Mr Molebatsi enquired about the total amount disbursed for funding YDF projects and the amount that was unspent during the said period.

He further sought clarity on the number of employment opportunities created by YDF projects, the total amount of loan arrears owed by beneficiaries and the amount that had been collected since the inception of the YDF.

MP Molebatsi also wanted the assistant minister to state the number of youth that had benefited from YDF in the Mmadinare constituency and why no disbursements had been made to the approved youth projects in his constituency in the current financial year. ENDS