LEA moves to save businesses
The Local Enterprise Authority ( LEA) has been mandated to manage a relief support facility to cushion the country’s informal sector from the impacts of the ongoing COVID- 19 pandemic.
With industries – micro, small, medium and large ailing from the unraveling impacts of the ongoing COVID- 19 pandemic, government has set aside P100 million to support the informal businesses, mostly hawkers and ot he r s , sprout i n g across cities, towns and villages. According to LEA, a third of the fund will be distributed to the hawkers and other informal sector business, while the remaining bulk of the fund will be used to develop support infrastructure for informal sector businesses across the country.“We are sending out notifications from our database to informal sector businesses to come and apply for P1000,00 support facility, which is non- refundable, to rebuild their operations that could have possibly been affected by the lockdown last year,” said the Director, Corporate a n d S t a k e h o l d e r Commu n i c a t i ons , Boikhutso Kgomanyane.
The development c ome s a f te r L E A embarked on a nationwide initiative to develop a centralized database for both formal and informal Small Medium Micro enterprises ( SMMEs) businesses countrywide, concluded end of last year. The database will inform the development of targeted support programmes and policies that will effectively benefit the SMME sector