Fisheries keeping loan facilities topped up

THE National Fisheries Authority is continuing a partnership with financial institutions to allow those in the fisheries sector greater access to loans.
The arrangements has been in place for the past five years, said NFA provincial support and industry development executive manager Welete Wararu when she gave a K1 million tranche payment to People’s Microbank last week.
“We have three MoAs (Memorandum of Agreement) where in 2005 we had one with the National Development Bank of K50 million and so far we have given K10 million and that is for the SME sector, in particular, those who are already existing that may need funds to buy boats and equipment to add value to their business operations and grow it,” Welete said.
“The other one is Nationwide Microbank for K5 million, but they have not been able to give us good reporting on this since 2014 so we only gave them the initial K1 million.
“This is a similar arrangement with Peoples Microbank that has us giving K1 million. They are represented in our budget.
“It is mostly for fish farmers and fishermen and the banks and financial institutions loan it out under their banking criteria, where they do the promotions and collection of debts.”