Cape Town - The Department of Small Business Development says it has created a financial scheme to support businesses in townships and rural areas.
The scheme will provide financial support of up to R1 million to individuals with businesses that meet the criteria and the focus is to create platforms that are going to provide the business support infrastructure and regulatory environment that enable entrepreneurs to thrive.
Speaking to the SABC, Small Business Development Minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams said that like any other administration, they conduct assessments and identify gaps in the economy.
“One of the critical gaps we have identified is that there is a gap between the township, rural and urban businesses. As we talk about the small businesses having a serious responsibility of creating jobs we need to make an intervention to bridge the gap between the township and the urban businesses,” she said.
Ndabeni-Abrahams said that when they launched this scheme they looked at different business categories but as time went by they realised that they have confined entrepreneurs in the township and rural areas to basic services.
With the large number of challenges including crime – with business owners forced to pay for protection and situations where people are being kidnapped – Ndabeni confirmed that they will be working with the police and communities in protecting these businesses. They don’t dish out cash but they provide equipment and give money in tranches to avoid wasteful expenditure.
“These are the people that stay without electricity and (have) limited access to connectivity, and most of the infrastructure development that needs to happen will be in those areas. Now we are reopening the scheme to all sectors that we have and all entrepreneurs can apply,” she said.
“Indeed, we heard of incidents where people are being bullied out of businesses and if you go to those who are running houses in the hospitality industry, stories that we hear are very shocking where people come and demand money. Because small businesses are vulnerable they end up giving them money.
“This is the engagement that we have with the National Treasury and Department of Public Service, including other corporates – to say we have a responsibility to protect small businesses because that’s another criminal activity that we have not paid attention to, just like people who are asking for bribes for other people to access the grants or whatever financial (assistance) we provide,” she said.
She further said that township or rural-based entrepreneurs can apply for support, including funding, through the common application template from the Small Enterprise Development Agency (Seda), the Small Enterprise Finance Agency (Sefa), the National Empowerment Fund (NEF) and the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA).
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