The passing of the Banking Amendment Act in 2016 continues to have an impact on local businesses. SMEs and even large businesses continue to feel the impact in their operations. Access to finance has particularly been affected as banks have been skeptical to lend to small organizations with a higher risk profile. This may however change through the Inuka na SME program by the Kenya Bankers Association.
The Kenya Bankers Association (KBA)’s program seeks to make it easy for SMEs to access both finance and training to aimed at growing their businesses.The approach will include training via a web portal and face-to-face learning on different modules such as value chain and operations, financial modelling, human resource and law. The training will take place through Kenya Insititute of Management in collaboration with among others the Kenya Chamber of Commerce, Kenya association of Manufacturers and Micro & Small enterprises Authority.
Upon undertaking the training business owners will have the necessary skills on how to run, grow and scale their organizations. The pilot to gauge the effectiveness of the modules offered has already taken place with the launch expected in the first quarter of this year. Upon launch, the face-to-face training will take place initially in Nairobi then Nakuru and to other parts of the country. Interested business owners can sign up for the curriculum on the Inuka na SME portal as well as plan for the training sessions in Nairobi.
Business owners will fill out an application specific to the Inuka na SME enterprise program and meet the credit assessment criteria. Banks will then base their decision to lend to the MSME based on the credit report and their ability to repay the loan. Businesses will further be required to create a business profile within the training module portal and this will be used to gauge their financing needs before having banks extend credit facilities to them.
