Tuesday, March 27, 2012

NDB: K20m loan fund for women

By ANCILLA WRAKUALE

NATIONAL Development Bank Board Chairman William Lamur yesterday announced a lending support of K20 million for women entrepreneurs in the formal sector this year, The National reports.
 Lamur announced this at the inaugural NDB Women in Business summit at Holiday Inn Hotel in Port Moresby.
The 300 women from all over PNG who turned up for the inaugural National Development Bank Women in Business Summit in Port Moresby yesterday. The summit ends today.-Nationalpic by EKAR KEAPU

Lamur said this was a 100% increase from the K9 million loaned last year to women-owned businesses in the formal sector.
“We have also approved and implemented a programme to have a Women in Business desk in all our branch offices and by end of April, all our branches will have a woman office to service your business needs,” he said.
“This is the first for any bank in PNG to recognise women entrepreneurs and make such a commitment to support businesswomen around the country.”
Lamur said research commissioned by NDB on women entrepreneurs showed they could not afford high interest rates of commercial banks, including NDB, for high-equity requirements and short-term loan lending.
“We have viewed our products and developed two new products specifically for women-owned and managed business to address all the concerns raised in our research to make NDB business loans more accessible to our women entrepreneurs,” he said.
The two new products will be launched tonight.
Lamur said he trusted the summit would inspire and motivate women to start or grow their own businesses.
Meanwhile, Lamur said NDB had not received a toea of NDB’s 2012 budget allocation of K130 million and has called on the government to release the money.
“I want to use the opportunity to call on the government again to release our 2012 budgeted funds, so we can lend to our clients including our business women,” he said.
He said the first quarter of this year had gone but they were confident of getting the first tranche of the K130 million

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