…Reveal goals to increase disbursements
BY KWANELE TSABEDZE
MANZINI – From 5 seedlings to a 1000 thousand trees.
This was the testimony of one entrepreneur during the business seminar hosted by the Youth Enterprise Revolving Fund at the 2023 Eswatini International Trade Fair yesterday.
The seminar was attended by over one hundred entrepreneurs, who were briefly trained on the most important aspects of business development to ensure viability and financeability.
Speaking about YERF during the training, Fezile Hlophe, who is an Agripreneur, detailed how YERF helped her grow her business by a significant magnitude.
“They found me with 70 trees. They helped me add 350 trees, so now I have 420. Then they also found me with two hectares of banana – I started with five seedlings, and now I have 1000 banana trees,” revealed Hlophe when explaining how her business has grown.
Other participants during the seminar also expressed hope that they can access funding to grow their businesses, following the implementation of their ideas.
“I have started a business, so I am here to see what opportunities are there for funding because I want it to grow and to be big,” said Nomvuselelo Khumalo.
“I think the seminar will help us a lot, and we hope that the processes will be quick to come together quickly, so we can proceed to create employment,” said another seminar participant, Mzwandile Thwala.
YERF Chief Executive Officer Mandla Nkambule was very enthusiastic about the youth’s response to the seminar. He mentioned that one of the reasons for hosting the seminar was to disseminate best principles for entrepreneurs to be good beneficiaries of the YERF fund.
“One of the challenges is that we disburse the funds, up to E25 million to date, and they return at a slow rate. However, we have exemplary beneficiaries of the fund who were able to repay their loans without any defaults at all,” said Nkambule.
The YERF business seminar was the second one which was targeted to youth, following a seminar on employment opportunities in the United States which was hosted by the United States embassy.
