North-Western Province Minister, Nathaniel Mubukwanu has implored commercial banks in the county to be innovative and come up with stimulus empowerment packages targeting women and youths to have access to means of production.
Mr Mubukwanu said government has invested heavily in women and youth empowerment programmes but it has huge responsibilities of taking care of other social needs of the people.
He said this in Solwezi last week when he officially re-launched Atlas Mara bank Solwezi branch which was refurbished at a cost of over K350, 000.
“I want to challenge Atlas Mara and all the commercial banks in the Republic of Zambia to be innovative. While the government will continue to play its part like we rolled out the economic recovery plan yesterday, we want commercial banks to supplement government efforts by coming up with innovative stimulus packages, innovative empowerment programmes that will target the women, that will target the young people so that they too can have access to means of production”, Mr Mubukwanu said.
He nevertheless, commended Atlas Mara for having the largest banking network in the province by having four branches in the province situated in Solwezi, Kabompo, Mwinilunga and Zambezi districts.
“This is a clear demonstration of your buying in as a bank of the philosophy of not leaving anyone behind”, Mr Mubukwanu said.
He however, appealed to the bank to do more because there are still some area in the province that lack banking services yet there are so many economic activities taking place in those areas.
Speaking at the same event, Atlas Mara Head of Marketing and Corporate communications, Eric Ngondo said the bank has come up with ease and friendly banking services tailored to service even people in remotest communities that have no banking infrastructure.
Mr Ngondo said the bank has launched services like community banking, Tenga group saving, among others, as a way of taking financial services deeper into the community.
“We have also introduced Tenga Group Savings on the same platform also known as Village Banking or Chilimba in partnership with World Vision which is another tool for financial inclusion and is very safe to avoid loss of savings as we hear every day.
“In this vain in 2020 we have launched our Agency Banking known as Community Banking across North-Western Province where we shall be partnering with SMEs (Small Medium Enterprises) and other retail businesses to provide Atlas Mara banking services deeper into the community. We have also partnered with Zoona, C-grate – Konse Konse and Kazang for cash in and cash out transaction services to increase our customer touch points”, Mr. Ngondo said.
He said community banking will enable savings and transactions in remotest communities in line with supporting government’s vision of taking development to all areas of Zambia ‘leaving no one behind’.
It’s difficult for any bank in Zambia to come up with such products because GRZ mops up all available funds from banks through treasury bonds. Banks feel comfortable to lend money at high yields to GRZ than to individuals because they spend time to manage them. So what Mubukwanu has proposed can only happen if GRZ controls its appetite for nkongole
Yet again, we said we were suffering in MMD days and changed government, if the rationale for removing government was that MMD was underperforming and we needed a new government to boost us ,why did the stimulus package not come immediately after removal of government, why should a stimulus package come in the ninth year of the PF government, the same way the youths are being hood winked with empowerment dribbles just a year before elections. The issues of covid are very new and should not be linked to our battered economy.
In time of YouTube, google and other search engines. If we let PF get away with it. It’s us to blame. and when I say us, mean the whole world. Just for the sake of argument, take the above article and stick it in artificial intelligence. It will come back with the answer that you cannot colonize Mars. PF just admitted that you have failed. PF time out.