No, I am not going to
answer in Tshivenda and I am not going to answer in Tsonga or Zulu, I will answer in English. The issue of access to money or access to funding, we have made it easy by using the common application form like I have mentioned when the question of what are the major challenges we are facing. There is not enough money available to give to all SMMEs. We can do as much as we can and we are trying to
leverage the private sector and other agencies that are playing in the country to extend the funding.
We are hoping that within this term of office there will not be a rejection of an application for funding but there will be a disbursement of funding to all SMMEs who qualify when we have raised the pot. I am told we need R60 billion to fund SMMMEs to make sure that the economy is really ticking and vibrant. We are hoping we can introduce creative mechanisms of raising the R60 billion without necessarily relying on national government coffers to fund that R60 billion.
And currently the work is that we don't want to turn down applicants because of the weak business proposal or weak business plan. We want to turn back the applicants because of weak business ideas but when the business idea is strong enough; we make a plan of either supporting the business nonfinancially until such time that the money will become available. But, unfortunately, it is not enough to reach everybody at the moment. Thank you.
Setswana: