The Minister of Gender, Labour, and Social Development Hon. Betty Amongi has revealed that government has finalised plans to onboard microfinance institutions and saccos for the GROW project.
The shs812billion Generating Growth Opportunities and Productivity for Women Enterprises(GROW) project was launched last year to increase access to entrepreneurial services that enable female entrepreneurs to grow their enterprises, including refugee women and women in host districts.
The project ensures that women access cheap capital from five commercial banks including Post Bank, Centenary Bank, Finance Trust Bank, DFCU Bank and Equity Bank at a rate not exceeding 10.5% per annum.
Addressing journalists Amongi said whereas the five banks combined have a network of 279 areas, plans are in high gear to ensure women who can’t access banks can also benefit through cooperatives and microfinance institutions.
“We are to onboard microfinance institutions and saccos to be able to reach women who might fear to go to banks. By December, we will have onboarded the microfinance institutions and cooperatives. We will release these names,” Amongi said.
Dr. Aisha Kasolo, the Project Coordinator said the onboarding of microfinance institutions and cooperatives will bring an added advantage to beneficiaries.
“We are bringing on board few large saccos and some microfinance institutions which can lend to women without expecting collateral. Women will access loans without collateral but will use guarantee from their colleagues,” Dr.Kasolo said.
She noted that government has an agreement with banks to accept both movable and immovable collateral.
Among said so far, shs18.98 billion has been lent out to 1,193 women entrepreneurs.
“Of these, 995 (83%) women entrepreneurs received loans in the category of shs4-20 million with value of shs9.03 billion; 132 (11%) women entrepreneurs borrowed amounts in the range of shs 20-40 million with total amount of UGX 3.97 billion while 66 (5.5%) borrowed under the category of 40-200 million with a value of shs5.987 billion. From our review, most of the loans are being made towards the priority sectors of the agricultural value chain, real estate and trade. Also, most of the loans have gone to women with small businesses,” Amongi said.
The Minister however admitted that government put in place an arrangement where GROW funds are disbursed in tranches with corresponding targets over a given period.
She noted that as part of the same arrangement, government contracted an independent firm (KPMG), to undertake a due diligence and verify the loan funds given out by the participating financial Institutions before the release of additional funds to the specific banks that have depleted the total amount initially released.
“In this case, Centenary Bank and Finance Trust Bank exhausted funds of shs6 billion each that were released in the first tranche. KPMG) has finalised the due diligence exercise and government is now set to release the next tranche of funds to the two aforementioned banks before the end of October 2024,” Amongi said.
The project coordinator, Dr.Kasolo allayed fears of women entrepreneurs about exhaustion of the funds.
“ If you have gone to the bank and they told you have deleted their money, they have only depleted the first batch. We will replenish the money. Today we are releasing money for Finance Trust Bank and Centenary Bank by Monday next week,” she said.
She said each of the two banks will receive shs6 billion in the second batch.
