THE Access to Business Funding Bill will be approved by next week.
This was revealed in Parliament yesterday by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade Manoa Kamikamica.
Mr Kamikamica said a critical challenge that MSMEs and Co-operatives face globally was access to finance.
“Recognising this challenge, the Fiji Government has taken a significant step forward by developing the “Access to Business Funding Bill” to be approved next week,” he said.
“The cooperative sector has demonstrated its effectiveness as a powerful tool for economic empowerment, especially in rural regions especially the Taukei.”
He said the United Nations had declared 2025 as the International Year of Co-operatives.
“This recognition aims to promote the cooperative model as a sustainable approach to economic development and social advancement.
“Thus, our focus will be modernising the legal and policy framework this year and plan to table amendments Co-operatives Act this year.
“Additionally, a grant program – Cooperative Development Fund approved by Parliament for the first time, is being rolled out and proving very popular.”
The second round of public consultation on the Access to Business Funding Bill was held in January and February in the Western and Central divisions, led by the four-member Parliamentary
Standing Committee on Economic Affairs, chaired by Assistant Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister Sakiusa Tubuna.
According to the consultation overview, access to simple and affordable forms of finance remained a key challenge for small and medium sized enterprises in Fiji, and the Bill reflected the Government’s efforts to fix this.
“Many SMEs in Fiji are unable to access traditional forms of finance without a proven revenue stream, monetisation strategy, credit history, or collateral,” the consultation overview stated.
“This has created a significant financing gap, which hinders the growth of the SME sector.”
“There is an opportunity to narrow this funding gap through alternative sources of financing, including small-scale offers (or ‘small offers’) regimes as well as equity crowdfunding (ECF) and Peer-to-Peer Lending (P2PL).
The purpose of the Bill, is two-fold: – it aims to enable private companies in Fiji to readily raise equity capital by way of a small offer regime; and it makes provision for investment-geared crowdfunding, in particular, ECF and P2PL in Fiji.
