EADB TO BOOST LOANS TO PRIVATE SECTOR

SIXTY per cent of loans extended by the East African Development Bank (EADB) go to small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

EADB Director General Godfrey Tumusiime said this in Dar es Salaam yesterday and vowed to continue supporting Tanzania’s private sector.

Mr Tumusiime boasted of the bank’s wide range of financial products in various sectors including education, trade and commerce, agriculture, hotels and tourism, health services, manufacturing and real estate.

The EADB chief made the revelation at the launch of bank’s first SMEs forum which is aimed at accelerating poverty alleviation in line with the National Growth and Reduction of Poverty Programme (MKUKUTA).

He said the forum comes at the time when the government was addressing challenges faced by SME’s in creating employment opportunities and their contribution to economic growth.

“The main purpose of this forum is to find ways and means through which EADB can build business relationships with you so that together we can promote growth of SMEs and the Tanzania private sector,” said the Director General in the presence of the Deputy Minister for Finance, Abdisalaam Issa Khatibu.

He called upon the private sector and especially SMEs to take advantage of such products and services as a way of achieving their business objectives and encouraged business community to go beyond credit financing and take advantage of the product such as equipment finance lease and equity investments the bank is offering.


EADB is owned by Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya with other shareholders including the African Development Bank, FMO (The Netherlands), DEG (Germany), Consortium of Yugoslav Institutions; SBIC- Africa Holdings; Commercial Bank of Africa, Nairobi, Norbanken AB, Stockholm; Standard Chartered Bank, London and Barclays Bank International, London.

SOURCE: DAILY NEWS