Mbabane: The Ministry of Sports, Culture and Youth Affairs has today announced E1.5 million of fresh funding that will go towards supporting 28 existing and start-up youth businesses through the Youth Enterprise Revolving Fund. This funding is expected to create 70 new jobs.
The 28 youth owned businesses to be funded are in agriculture, services and ICT, retail, engineering, hospitality, construction and manufacturing. This latest funding means that, in total, 150 youth owned businesses have been supported by Government through the Youth Fund and all these are expected to create over 400 jobs.
Minister of Sports, Culture and Youth Affairs Harries Bulunga said capital investment is only but one of many other support mechanisms that his ministry have in place to ensure that youth-owned businesses succeed in the Kingdom. “I am further pleased to announce that the Fund will be opening the last application window of 2020 from 14 October to 13 November. I therefore encourage our entrepreneurial youth to apply.”
Youth Fund CEO Bhekizwe Maziya said together with partners, they have worked hard in finding long lasting strategies towards improvement of the loan processing turnaround time which has been a thorny issue for our beneficiaries since inception.
“I make semi-cooked traditional food. I got funding from the YERF which helped me grow my business and I will soon be supplying big supermarkets with my product.” Youth Fund beneficiary Sibusiso Hlophe said in appreciation to the Youth Fund.
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