Youth and women entrepreneurs will be among the prime beneficiaries of the recently mooted Trade Finance Facility (TFF) of the East African Community.

Speaking to The New Times yesterday, the EAC Deputy Secretary General in charge of  Planning and Infrastructure, Alloys Mutabingwa, said the facility is intended to enhance access to bank credit, especially by the youth and women entrepreneurs.  

"The facility will provide guarantee to financial institutions by reducing the risks incurred by banks in lending to those without collateral,” Mutabingwa said.

He stressed that TFF would act as a risk mitigation framework towards facilitating those without access to capital when starting business.

Mutabingwa added that the facility, which would run for the next three years, was EAC’s short and medium term target and hoped to embark on it next month.

"We have done the ground work, and starting May, we will begin pilot studies to see how it works,” he stated.
The Deputy Secretary General explained that as a key strategic intervention, EAC wants to prioritise the facility through existing structures of partner countries.

Mutabingwa underscored that the youth and women were vulnerable in terms of financial capacity but are the most active category of people.

"Once we have done well with this target group, we will have dealt with more than 70 percent of the causes of poverty because these are the ones who remain dependants, so we will have reduced dependency,” he observed.

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