Firm launches US$500 000 SMEs fund

enterprises fund that will be accessed by traders and businesses operating formally.
Speaking to the Herald Business, Oxlink Capital general manager Mrs Rudo Makandwa said the fund was part of her company’s response to the needs of business.
She said the accessibility cascades to the very small businesses as long as they are operating formally.
“Eligible SMEs will have the chance to pool together their resources or assets to come up with collateral to secure the loans. This will enable even those SMEs that may not necessarily have collateral to get a change to access loans from the fund,” she said. The fund has flexible repayment arrangements extending up to six months depending on the respective borrower’s business cash flows. Zimbabwe has since dollarisation been experiencing liquidity challenges that have been hindering operations of businesses and the country’s economic turnaround.
As a result, credit has not generally been available to smaller businesses which remain marginalised because of their size and lack of collateral.
“The future of Zimbabwe is going to be largely premised on the mining, agriculture and services sectors.
“The fund is largely skewed towards traders who have vibrant cash flows and able to spin cash with stable margins at least within a minimum period of three months,” said Mrs Makandwa. Currently, 114 micro-finance institutions are operating in Zimbabwe, the majority of which are concentrated in Harare, leaving a huge pool of unbanked small businesses in rural areas and other smaller cities and towns.
The facility comes after Government signed a US$5 million facility with the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa for small- and medium-scale enterprises working capital. Despite being recognised as the key to economic growth, the small- to medium-scale enterprises sector in Zimbabwe remains grossly under-funded.
However, SMEs continue to be the powerhouse of growth for nearly all developed economies, as well as forming key growth areas for other developing countries.
In Zimbabwe, the small business sector was responsible for creating employment when large corporations were either closing or scaling down operations during the hyperinflationary period.