The Sunday News
Rutendo Nyeve, Sunday News Reporter
THE Government is working on modalities that will see Empower Bank and Zimbabwe Women Microfinance (ZWMB) being awarded the Prescribed Assets Status and get resources to allocate loans to youths and women, it has been confirmed.
Prescribed assets are the percentage of pension funds’ assets (and possibly of other institutional investors) that, by law, have to be allocated to certain Government-approved instruments. In an interview recently, Finance, Economic Development and Investment Promotion Minister Professor Mthuli Ncube said Government was working on awarding the two institutions the status in order to mobilise resources and promote entrepreneurship and job creation for the youths and women.
“We should not forget entrepreneurship programmes to support the youth. We will continue to work on those as the Government through various programmes. We have the Empower Bank and the Women’s Bank which support the youth and women with capital respectively. As the Government we are committed to capacitating these institutions so that they see their businesses through. Already, we are working with the Empower Bank and Women’s Bank to award them with the Prescribed Asset status to allow them to work with pension funds for them to gain resources for the purposes of extending additional loans to women and youth,” said Prof Ncube.
He said the efforts will go a long way in creating jobs and reviving the economy of the country which were incredible development pillars within the National Development Strategy (NDS1).
Prof Ncube said the development was cognisant of the fact that both banks were formed with the purpose of providing social and financial solutions to the financially excluded population with Empower Bank’s greater focus being the youths.
The bank offers loans for youth-led business and agriculture projects, asset finance, guarantees and savings accounts cutting across urban, peri-urban and rural Zimbabwe as well as empower marginalised communities to come out and live in dignity. It also serves small businesses through upscaling them to generate employment opportunities.
On the other hand, the ZWMB was birthed at the realisation that women constitute 52 percent of the population and are believed to work ten times more than men and produce more than half of the country’s food, yet they earn only 10 percent of the country’s income.
Last year, projects worth nearly US$187 million and $8,5 billion were funded from the programmes by the Government during the first-half of the year. At law, pension funds and insurance firms are required to have at least 20 percent of their investment portfolio in prescribed assets.
The Insurance and Pensions Commission (Ipec) which is the responsible body gave the prescribed asset status to companies which included African Century which received US$15 million for onward lending. Pure Oil was given US$5 million for the import of soya beans and crude oil while Centra West got US$42,5 million for power generation.
The Zimbabwe Electricity Industry Pension Fund received US$6,5 million for the construction of Marondera Shopping Mall and Datvest U$7,5 million for the development of residential stands. – @nyeve14.
