Uganda Development Bank (UDB), the country’s Development Finance Institution, has launched the Enterprise Development Program aimed at preparing entrepreneurs for financing through enhanced business practices.
The Enterprise Development Program will be a series of trainings under the Bank’s Business Accelerator for Successful Entrepreneurship Program, conducted on the basis to build business survival and resilience and walking the entrepreneurship journey in supporting business owners to appreciate why they should operate their businesses professionally so as guarantee their long-term profitability and sustainability.
“Access to finance remains a major challenge for businesses, especially Small and Medium Enterprises in Uganda because many are not formalized and structured. Some of the other challenges include; inadequacies in management, governance, financial management and record keeping, business planning, statutory compliance, tax compliance and standards,” said Mr. Sam Edem Maitum, the Director of Credit at UDB and Acting Managing Director, during the launch at Hotel Africana in Kampala.
“In response to these challenges, UDB has organized the Enterprise Development Program to bridge the gap between enterprises, especially SMEs and financing. Together with other government partners, we are making every effort to ease and enable a seamless credit application process for entrepreneurs.”
The training sessions will be held in partnership with the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) which will ensure that tax compliance is aligned end-to-end, Uganda Registration Services Bureau (URSB) for business registrations, Uganda National Bureau of Standards for quality certification and the Ministry of Trade and Industry for alignment to the government agenda.
The program will be conducted across the country starting with the Central Region where the Bank is expected to train over 365 entrepreneurs with consequent trainings in the Northern region where 279 entrepreneurs shall be trained, 273 in Eastern region and over 250 trainees in the Western region, respectively.
Last year, the Bank published a call for applications inviting enterprises interested in business advisory support and a total of 1,064 applications were received confirming a high appetite for improvement among the business community in Uganda.
“These trainings will be conducted in a phased approach. Our target is to get the enterprises to a level where they can effortlessly access financing and resultantly grow their businesses, create jobs, pay taxes, increase output value and become foreign exchange earners thus accelerating Uganda’s socio-economic development,” Mr. Maitum concluded.
According to a recent report by Economic Policy Research Centre, the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) employ 8.5 million Ugandans.
90% of these SMEs contribute to the private sector and 80% of them are in manufacturing yet the sad fact is that about 70% of the MSME’s close before celebrating their second birthday.