Lack of access to funding to help grow their businesses is a great hindrance to the growth and development of small businesses in the country. And to address this challenge the Gauteng government is considering launching a bank that will assist them .
Premier, David Makhura, said: “We will start to put into action the creation of a state bank that will support the township economy,” he told the Gauteng township economy revitalisation summit in Soweto.
Makhura said that the Gauteng Enterprise Propeller (GEP) did not have enough capacity to assist businesses.
“We want to position it properly. So far its work has been too little. It has been helping too few people. It has been operating like a typical bank. We want to transform it, to focus particularly on the transformation of the township,” he said.
GEP is a provincial government agency established in 2005 under the auspices of the economic development department to provide non-financial support, financial support, and co-ordinate stakeholders for the benefit of small, medium and micro entrepreneurs (SMMEs) in Gauteng.