Local financial institution, CBZ Holdings Limited has availed more business opportunities for Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to grow their businesses and continue to boost the Zimbabwean economy, 263Chat can reveal.
Speaking at the second edition of the CBZ International SME Indaba 2018, CBZ Acting Chief Executive Officer, Peter Zimunya said the extensive knowledge of the Zimbabwean economy they have gained over the last three decades has helped them identify opportunities they are keen to support.
“We have identified several opportunities in and around Zimbabwe that we are keen to support, these opportunities cut across the whole economy including but not limited to partnerships, joint ventures and business synergies,
“These business synergies are particularly in Manufacturing, Mining, Tourism, Construction, Services including (retail, hotels, catering, ICT , Micro financing and call centres), Agro processing, Agriculture, and Energy,
“We are pursuing these opportunities directly through our subsidiaries namely CBZ Bank, CBZ Life, CBZ Insurance, CBZ Risk Advisory, CBZ Asset Management and CBZ Properties, we also pursuing these opportunities indirectly through smart partnerships with like-minded players in the private and public sectors both local and International, “ said Zimunya.
He added that they will be using the CBZ Value Chain Financing Model to leverage their wide range of products and strong relationships with the large corporates.
“We will be leveraging our wide range of products to help our SMEs customers in expanding and identifying new markets, to link our SMEs customers with large corporates and enhance their chances of accessing funding on the back of off-take agreements,
“Utilise our insurance subsidiaries to protect our SMEs from various business risks and to arrange favorably priced lines of credit for our borrowing large corporates and assist in ensuring that these corporates pass on the benefits of favorably priced funding to the SMEs to enhance eventual value received by the SMEs,” added Zimunya.
Officiating at the same event, Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Enterprise Development, Abigail Shonhiwa applauded the hard work of SMEs saying they are contributing greatly to the economy.
“SMEs are sustaining many economies worldwide and for us here in Zimbabwe the sector has shown resilience and held forth in sustaining livelihoods an dthe economy when bigger corporates were in distress and others closed their doors due to the economic challenges that ravaged our nation in the past years,
“We can all appreciate what our SMEs can do for this economy if fully supported,” said Shonhiwa.
