TEVETA hit K1bn FDH loans jackpot
The Technical, Entrepreneurial and Vocational Education and Training (TEVET), the Malawi’s sole vocational training regulatory authority which also collects and manages training levies in the country, on Monday signed memorandum of understanding with FDH Bank where the bank is expected to provide soft loans to graduates from TEVETA programs.
Speaking during the signing ceremony, FDH Deputy Managing Director George Chitera said the partnership is aimed at boosting the already existing talent and skills which are gained from these institutions.
“We have decided to go into this partnership because we appreciate the role several disciplines play from these colleges ,” he said.
He said these boys and girls from the these colleges have great ideas but they lack support.
“So we believe if these young men and women are given a push in form of start up capital they should be able to employ more,” he said.
In summery Chitera said the bank wants to turn these young graduates into employers.
On the same Chitera appealed to the Government to ensure contracts are given to these young people and not foreigners all the time.
He said for example if young men wants to venture into quarry crushing, then as a bank we can come in and buy a crushing kit for our young people this is kind of partnership that the bank expect.
He said it is sad to see Malawians crushing the quarry manually while the Chinese are buying the whole land just to mine the quarry.
With the partnership, the Bank will be giving K10Million to K50Million to each working business idea and will charge a small money as interest on it.
On top of that the Bank will also train the young people business entrepreneurship skills.
TEVETA Executive Director Mr Elwin Chiwembu Sichiola has since hailed the signing of the partnership saying it will help all the graduating students to access working capital. He said the skills without working capital have no meaning at.
He said Malawi is now graduating so many young people with skills through the programs that we run in technical colleges.
“But the challenge has been that most of them when they graduate, they do not find employment, but they also cannot start their own businesses and through research we have discovered that one of the biggest challenges that these young people are facing is the issue of capital. When they go to financial institutions, generally financial institutions will demand things like colateral and so many other things, which being first first graduates they don’t have, ” he said.
He said ” Luckily for us, we have managed to find a partner who shares in our ideas, but also who is as passionate as we are in seeing these young people prospering, ” he said.
He said that is why they have come up with this agreement where every graduate from a technical college will have opportunities to access the facility .
“Any graduate who is intending to start a small business can access financing, which is so cheap in the form of a soft loan, but also whose requirements we believe every person can he can be able to achieve them for as long as they follow the requirements, which is to form groups, ” he said.
Mr Sichiola said these graduates have brilliant ideas, which are going to work. “They will access this money and then they will start their businesses and prosper just like we always want them to do if you understand the way we have structured this agreement, it doesn’t have a limit in terms of the number of students is the number of ideas so the students themselves will set the limit if we have 1/3 and the ideas will finance 1000 ideas but our hope is we finance as many students as possible, ” he said.
Currently Malawi will be graduating close to 7000 students a year from technical colleges.
“Now we want everyone who cannot find a job or who wants to go into entrepreneurship to be able to access these loans and then start off their businesses so that they also can contribute to the socio-economic development of this country.
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