Bank sets up capital fund for small enterprises

KINA Bank chief executive officer Greg Pawson says the bank is setting up a capital fund for small-medium enterprises.
Pawson said the concept was similar to crowd-funding which has been largely talked about to assist SMEs but had never been successful.
“So without government funding, we are thinking that we could probably set something up ourselves given that we have the expertise through our Kina Funds Management business,” he said.
“There has been much talk about setting up crowd funds and private equity capital funds to support SME sector but many have never been successful.
“So the capital fund is going to follow later in the year.”
Pawson said a lot of SMEs had complained of failing to access loans because of lack of capital.
“We are one of three investment banking licenses in PNG and using that we want to set a potential capital fund that will enable more mature small to medium enterprises that have greater opportunities to expand domestically or even export to help facilitate that becoming an investor,” he said.
“The bank will also set up an e-business capability to include fee-free transactional banking and access to the banks payment gateways.”