The Small Business Development Minister, Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, says the government has developed a power purchase product to assist small and medium businesses that have been impacted by load shedding.
She says this will assist them with a financing solution to acquire alternative technology to mitigate the impact of load shedding on their businesses.
According to Ndabeni-Abrahams, her department sought to reprioritise unspent funds from the township and rural entrepreneurship programme as the power purchase product is not budgeted for.
She was responding to questions in the National Council of Provinces.
“We are continuing to engage NT in order to see the need to approve this and if possible add additional resources. We indicated during budget vote that for township businesses R70 and for the informal businesses it is pure grant. And for the businesses that are a certain level the go to SIFA where we have allocated R200m that must be applied for by businesses that qualify for SIFA products.”
Calls for establishment of small business ombudsman: Minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams:
