THE South Pacific Business Development Program has seen most of its members getting affected by the COVID-19 pandemic even though it still managed to increase its loan disbursement.
According to the general manager Elrico Munoz their focus was on the rehabilitation of the members and their businesses which were facing the difficulties of the pandemic.
“A big portion of our members are having some difficulties in their businesses so we are now focusing our program on the Business Recovery Programs,” he said. “So it’s about asking them what we can do if their business is failing as they can move on to another alternative source of business or source of income.
“Right now it’s not about the expansion but it is addressing this crisis first.”
Mr Munoz said through the rehabilitation program they had seen an increase in interest from non-members.
“We have actually seen Motoriki Island, they asked us to go there and we are now conducting centre formation there — there might be four villages that might be interested.”
He said there were three villages which were waiting to observe the outcomes of the program as they were said to be “burned” by the previous microfinance.
“We are also looking into going into Kadavu because there are requests from there.
“The stigma is still there, I still remember when I opened in Lautoka people were still coming to us with their old pass books.
“We don’t immediately take your savings, we will always have the training so the training is actually provided by us for free.
“The training revolves around allowing members to be more self-confident of themselves, as well as how to look for business opportunities as well as to have these members do make their own decisions.”
SPBD founder and CEO Greg Casagrande said one of the issues they found out was it was very difficult for their clients to save with the commercial banks.
“There were all sorts of minimum deposit requirements; there were all sorts of monthly fees it was expensive to go to and from the bank or the capital city.
“So savings was a losing money proposition.”
He said SPBD helped train its members to understand their businesses and financial aspects over the course of the year.
