The country’s leading Small and Medium Enterprise-SME lender, Fina Bank, is set to enhance lending to the SME sector amidst calls to financial institutions to extend credit to the sector.This comes after the bank registered growth in lending to the sector last year with plans to increase credit and technical support to the country’s fastest growing but capital stricken sector.”When we started our operations in Rwanda, 80 percent of growth was contributed by SMEs. We should focus on SME lending. We have developed products specifically for SMEs,” Rao G Balivada, Managing Director of Fina bank Rwanda said last Friday.Fina Bank registered an outstanding SME growth lending of Rwf 2.6 billion at the beginning of last year with the gross loan book to the sector reaching Rwf 5.6 billion by the end of the year indicating a 115 percent growth.Moreover, the increase in SME lending is backed by the fact that the banks non performing loans-NPL ratio of the segment declined from over 27 percent to 10 percent in 2011, indicating a positive outlook for the sector.To ensure better SME lending and client service, Balivada says that an upscale skills set was achieved last year through imparting training to the entire relationship team on credit assessment, financial analysis among others.“We created capacity and trained our staff on SME lending and sent our people upcountry and conducted seminars and workshops on business practices”.Financial analysts say that financial institutions need to break bureaucratic procedures and many loans requirements which scare most SMEs especially startups increasing their mortality before the end of their first year of establishment.For financial institutions to achieve better SME funding, Balivada says, “We need to create capacity internally so that SMEs specific attitude and assessment is done.”The Executive Director of Business Banking at the bank, Kenneth Agaba says that the bank decided to waive charges on international remittances for Civil Society Organisations as one way of increasing inclusion and social development to the rural people.“We are concerned as a financial institutions on the impact civil society organizations create in our people especially transforming their economic lives. Easing banking for them would mean we are increasing financial inclusion for all,” he observed. Most banks put a fee on international remittances to not-for-profit organisations, which interferes with their budgets.“We always budget 100 percent for our projects and send the budgets to donors. So it means that when the bank charges a fee, our budget reduces which makes it hard to execute the project,” Vincent Karangwa of Ubuzima project, a health NGO said. Fina bank has forgone a total of Rwf 106 million in profits from the international remittances.
