Woman gets loan capital from NDB

By SALLY POKITON
UPNG journalism student
A WOMAN engaged in small-scale saw-milling business is the latest loan recipient from the National Development Bank’s Women in Business desk.
Mother of seven and businesswoman Lydia Junnie Nuan, who owned a wood-processing mill at Buawitu village outside Lae (along Okuk Highway) in Morobe province, was a proud recipient of a K156,310-loan, which she would use to buy a new sawmill.
Part of the money would also be used as working capital for her wood processing business.
Nuan is the owner and manager of Juan Resource Empowerment Services, which began processing timber in 2009.
It was now supplying timber to Hardware Haus in Lae.
Nuan, a member of the PNG Women In Business, said she was told by a friend about NDB’s women’s desk.
After meeting the criteria, she took out a loan to boost her logging and down-stream processing business.
As a first Papua New Guinean woman to go into timber processing, she said she was thankful to NDB for the loan that she obtained through merit system, after an inspection was done on her sawmill.
Nuan said NDB officers visited her property and saw its potential and her determination to push it.
NDB’s Women In Business desk relationship manager Janet Kaule  said since the desk was set up in September last year, K8 million of the K10 million allocated for loans was lent to 50 successful women applicants who expanded or started their business this year.
Loans ranged from K5,000 to K1.5.
NDB southern regional manager Robert Thadeus said NDB saw this as a great step forward for women in business and NDB was proud to associate itself in such business endeavour.