Ilakini notes need for financial skills

THE National Fisheries Authority (NFA) has provided close to K50 million to small fisheries business but lack of financial literacy has hampered their growth, acting managing director Justin Ilakini says.
Ilakini said there were about 20 registered fisheries cooperative societies but most lacked financial skills.
He said this during the signing of a memorandum of agreement with the National Superannuation Fund (Nasfund) on Thursday for the rollout of financial literacy training.
He said the partnership would empower small fisheries businesses to learn the importance of savings and reinvestment into their business to be sustained.
“We have given almost K50 million to our small people,” Ilanini said.
“Over the years, we have made available credit facilities but at the same time we realised that there is a lot of failures and no success stories though we give them capital to start up their business.
“We have reviewed those programmes and identified that they don’t know how to sustain their little business. Government through NFA is investing in a number of critical infrastructures to enable growth in the sector which poses a lot of opportunities for the people.”