“Empreendedora Rural” is the new initiative of Gapi, in partnership with the Mozambique Chamber of Commerce (CCM), launched on the occasion of the Mozambican Women’s Day.
This initiative, called Projecto Empreendedora Rural (PER), aims to contribute to promote women entrepreneurship in rural and peri-urban areas and starts with a fund of 30 million Meticais, open to the participation of other entities.
This project constitutes the first activity foreseen in an agreement that these two institutions decided to establish, to support the improvement of competitiveness and resilience of small companies.
The launch of the PER, was accompanied by the first financing to a young woman entrepreneur, in the amount of one million and two hundred thousand Meticais, and was applauded by several individualities, amongst which dozens of women entrepreneurs, that were participating in the event “Praising the woman”, held within the scope of the women’s week, organized by CCM.
Speaking at the event, Álvaro Massinga, president of CCM and one of the signatories of the agreement, said that “the combination of efforts and resources between a development financial institution – Gapi-SI – and a business promoting entity – CCM -, has a great potential to generate synergies with an impact on the Country’s economic development and, in particular, in the expansion and consolidation of private business initiatives”.
On behalf of Gapi, the Chairman of the Executive Committee, Adolfo Muholove, highlighted that the partnership between these two institutions “stems from Gapi’s strategy and mission, which prioritises the design and implementation of projects that contribute to a more inclusive and sustainable economic development of Mozambique and that motivate the collaboration of other governmental or private national entities, as well as financial institutions and bilateral and multilateral cooperation. Therefore, this project is open to the participation of other entities”.
Through the words of the leaders of the two institutions, it was made explicit that the motto for the CCM-Gapi agreement is based on the need for partnerships between national institutions, capable of implementing programmes and projects focused on the promotion of the small and medium sized private sector and job generation.
The terms of the agreement between the two institutions highlights the fact that CCM integrates a significant number of companies from different sectors and sizes and has as its objective to promote business, in particular the modernisation of agriculture and its entire production chain, as well as to boost the Country’s industrialisation efforts; as a counterpart, on Gapi’s side, is a financial institution with national implantation and more than three decades of experience in the management and implementation of development projects focused on small businesses.
Leonor Sitoe, PER coordinator, informed the audience that “we are now starting with a pilot phase that will last for 3 months and an initial amount of 30 million Meticais. In this phase and with this initial budget, the intervention will be limited to the provinces of Inhambane, Gaza and Maputo”.
Speaking about the characteristics of this project, Sitoe said that “to improve the success rate of these businesses, in addition to the resources for granting credit, the project will include a component of technical assistance services focused on management and business development, as well as a specific support service for the formalisation of businesses to improve the eligibility and bankability of income generating activities carried out by women.
To expand the scope of this project, Gapi and CCM will immediately work with other available and interested entities and join this initiative, in favour of a more inclusive development throughout Mozambique.
MZNews
