August 23, 2021
By: James Kamara-Manneh
The Chief Executive Officer of Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agencies (SMEDA), Sharka Samuel Sannoh has on the 20th August,2021 at the Secretariat conference room informed the press that 80% of females are beneficiaries of the Munafa fund across the country. He intimated on the progress report received from 10 Financial Service Providers (FSPs) made in disbursing the Munafa funds since its commencement.
Mr. Sannoh said before the implementation of the fund, he realized that trade institutions involved in the registration of businesses promised traders that it was an assurance for them to access the Munafa Fund; however, he added that it was not a guarantee to securing the loan.
Therefore, some aggrieved traders are becoming bad campaigners for the scheme. He said before the commencement of disbursing the funds, trainings were organized for traders by SMEDA but went further to note that it was not an assurance for them accessing the Munafa fund.
During the brief, Mr. Sannoh and team presented an analysis, corroborated with data of beneficiaries to the Munafa Fund nationwide and stated that 80% of the beneficiaries were female.
However, he cautioned other business owners to trust the institution and that plans are in progress to extend the funding to other beneficiaries in the country.
“Registering with SMEDA and attending our trainings is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient condition to access the Munafa fund,” the SMEDA CEO clarified.
He added that normally when any government dishes out monies to traders to improve on their businesses those gestures are most times misconstrued and smeared with politics.
This time, he said SMEDA decides to move away from such and to have a good amount of recovering the funds they decided to outsource consultants to secure the elements of disbursement of funds.
Therefore, the third party in the form of commercial banks or micro finance institutions were included and out of seventeen that applied ten institutions were selected, and the nine were micro finance institutions.
Mr. Sannoh said SMEDA through government initiatives gave out the business loans to people who met the criteria and those that were selected were done by the various financial partners and the loan given was on a low interest rate.
He said even though, not every small business institutions or owners will be able to access the fund at its first implementation, he described it as a revolving funds were he encouraged beneficiaries repay within the stipulated time so that others will benefit.
He highlighted several challenges prominent among all he said they did not include the traders union into scheme because they learnt that some sector from the union were into the habit of requesting for money from traders on the pretext that they will get access to the Munafa loan; this has become a problem to them. However, this have not been the case and because that they have posing challenge to the implementation of the scheme.
On the other, Munafa Fund Manager, Mr. Komba Gbolie on behalf of the Financial Service Providers (FSPs) expressed appreciation to the government of Sierra Leone for bringing such opportunity to the door step of business people. He said as FSPs they are supporting government to improve on the economic and added that micro finance is a spark plug to economic growth to a country. Even though there where some challenges, according to Mr. Gbolie they were able to put them under control. He revealed to press men that there are some people who yet to accessing the loan but expressed confidence that since it is a gradual process he believed that their chances will be at their doorstep soon.
Meanwhile, among the many beneficiaries that were in attendance few of them expressed appreciation to the government of President Bio for such a wonderful opportunity and the loan has contributed greatly in improving their businesses and they have vouched to comply with the monthly commitment.
However, the traders called on government to increase on the loan in the future.