President William Ruto has directed the Ministry of Cooperatives and Medium, Small and Micro Enterprises (MSMEs) to engage borrowers on the possibility of adding asset financing to Hustler Fund.
According to President Ruto, the move will enable entrepreneurs acquire capital intensive assets easily through the government-run fintech product.
“Hustler Fund has not only provided us with the huge demand for affordable credit but also shown us the readiness of Kenyans to embrace credit and savings and to pay their loans on time with minimum prompting,” he said during State of The Nation Address on Thursday.
“The notion that Kenyans are not credit worthy or high risk is nothing more than unjust financial profiling which has become a needless self-fulfilling prophesy,” he added.
- Since the launch of the Fund, officially known as the Financial Inclusion Fund, on 30th November last year, the platform has disbursed KSh 36.6 billion with KSh 2.3b savings, by the end of October 2023.
- The Fund now has 7.5 million repeat borrowers whose overall repayment rate is 73 per cent.
- The Group product in the platform has attracted 50,000 groups of which 20,000 have accessed KSh 151million.
But…
The Treasury has signalled a reduction in the budget for the Hustler Fund by almost half, to KSh 5 billion, in the latest budgetary changes.
This is from the KSh10 billion that the Treasury Cabinet Secretary, Njuguna Ndung’u initially set aside for the Hustler Fund in June for 2023/24.
