About 270 million meticais have been disbursed over the past seven years (2017-2023) to finance just over 400 entrepreneurial initiatives in the Zambezi Valley (Tete, Manica, Sofala and Zambezia).
The amount was developed in the context of the implementation of the Agribusiness and Entrepreneurship Financing Line (FAE), an initiative of the Zambezi Agency operationalized by the National Investment Bank (BNI).
The FAE aims to strengthen the productive capacity of various actors of the agribusiness chain; newly graduated students small and medium enterprises in order to contribute to the increase of the national production, according to explained yesterday the Director of Technical and Financial Assistance Services at the Zambezi Agency, Nelson António, during a visit to evaluate the impacts of the project in the District of Vanduzi, in Manica.
“We were able, with this initiative, to allocate to the market more than 210 thousand tons of diverse products from 407 projects that have been financed, so far” – listed Nelson António, adding some infrastructures that were erected, and more than six thousand jobs generated.
BNI’s Credit Director, Pedro Sitoe, highlighted the project’s contribution to the national economy through the “creation of employment, wealth based on production and the gradual increase in production areas”.
The BNI representative advanced that, in the first phase of the MEF, “out of the 407 financed projects, we have around 300 projects that are on a good path (making payments)” – highlighting some difficulties that some young people face arising from experience in the area of financial management and technical experience in project implementation.
It should be noted that the Agribusiness and Entrepreneurship Facility was endowed with an initial capital of 419.1 million, corresponding to € 6.0 million, co financed by the Mozambican Government and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands