Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza Tuesday officially opened a subsidiary of the Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) in the capital, Bujumbura. Several officials including the country’s finance minister, the governor of the Burundian Central Bank (BRB), diplomats accredited to Burundi, members of the business community working in Burundi and KCBs top officials attended the official launch of KCBs branch. In his speech, the chairman of the KCB group Peter Muthoka said that the bank is bringing a big asset to help Burundians have easy access to loans. Were bringing ten million U.S. dollars as KCB assets to help the Burundian business community including small and middle-sized enterprises have access to loans. We will also enhance banking skills here in Burundi, said the chairman. According to Muthoka, KCB brings a variety of affordable things including services of savings, and loans to all categories of the Burundian population. We (KCB) are committed to backing Burundi in the preparation of the 50th independence anniversary due on July 1, said Muthoka. He also stressed that KCB will back the Burundian sports sector. The KCB group top official further pledged that the bank will identify critical needs of the Burundian communities in order to help them solve those issues. With the launch of this branch in Burundi, we (KCB) have now covered the whole east African region, said Muthoka. He indicated that KCB was already present in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan and Rwanda with several branches in those countries. In his keynote address, Burundian President Nkurunziza called upon more investors to bring their assets to Burundi as the climate business is under big reforms. The country (Burundi) has undertaken big reforms to ease business in Burundi. The climate business is now satisfactory because we undertook big reforms. The evidence is the tremendous progress made in the Doing Business report for 2011, said Nkurunziza. Nkurunziza, however, said that he expected that KCB will offer low credit rates to the people living in Burundi in order to make a difference with the existing banking institutions. He said: We call upon Burundian banking institutions to be more competitive and open branches also in the east African region.”
