23 Nov 2022

Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency (CEDA) has invested a total of P332m in the SPEDU region.

Addressing councilors during the ongoing Selebi Phikwe Town Council (SPTC) full council meeting on Tuesday, the Mayor of Selebi Phikwe, Mr Lucas Modimana said the funds were used to finance over 2882 projects with a total employment of 5 702 in the entire greater SPEDU region.

He said CEDA continued to make remarkable progress in providing financial and technical support for business development with a view to promote viable and sustainable citizen owned enterprises. 

Mr Modimana said for the financial year 2021/2022 to date, the agency had funded 334 projects in Selebi Phikwe with a total value of over P90m which included both the main line projects and the informal sector.

He further explained that through Mabogo-Dinku, which was CEDA’s microfinance product that offered subsidised loans to enable citizens’ participation in enterprise development, the agency had funded 46 projects with a value of P486 000 in the financial year 2021/2022 whilst the Letlhabile product funded an additional 349 projects with an amount of over P1.6m in the same period.

Post the effects of BCL mine closure and COVID – 19 pandemic, he said the economic activities in Selebi Phikwe indicated that the town was open for business resulting in the issuance of 173 formal businesses licenses and 455 informal sector licenses, creating 592 jobs in this quarter.

He also informed councillors that the Council had been working closely with SPEDU in monitoring of some community projects, adding that SPEDU had to this end donated a total of P65 000 towards expansion of the Thakomebosele Tswana Chicken project.

The donation, he said was intended to cover costs to construct two poultry houses, erection of water tank stands and procurement of brooding units. 

Thus he commend SPEDU for such a generous gesture and appealed to the business community and other development agencies to partner with council for expansion of such community projects.

With regard to reviving Selebi Phikwe economy, Mr Modimana said the large scale Citrus Project which started its operations in 2020, had the potential to significantly transform the economy of Selebi Phikwe once it was fully operational adding that this is a great milestone in the diversification of the Selebi Phikwe economy.

The project, he said currently employed over 1000 people with a total of 700 000 fruit trees already been planted and an additional 300 000 tree seedlings to be planted.

Finally Mr Modimana said the process of intensifying restructuring of the economy was through development of value chains as espoused in the President’s Reset Agenda priority number four, as such Selebi Phikwe was doing well in that regard, citing companies like Afri-Oils and Napro which were already participating in that space.

 “I therefore encourage the Local Economic Development (LED) committee to speed up the development of the towns LED strategy which should be skewed towards delivery of priority number 4 of the Reset Agenda as I earlier highlighted,” he said. BOPA