Small and Medium Enterprisers - Entrepreneurs Financial Centre (EFC) formerly Pulse Finance Services Limited yesterday disclosed that it will this year disburse about K65 billion to local Small and Medium Enterprisers in the country. EFC chief executive officer Claude Lafond said that every month an average total amount of more than K6.2 billion was being disbursed to SMEs in different sectors of the economy adding that, the bigger chunk of the money was being accessed by SMEs in the Trading and services sector.

Speaking in Lusaka during the rebranding of Pulse Finance Services Limited to Entrepreneurs Financial Centre, Mr. Lafond said the current set up of Zambia's financial sector was not adequately addressing needs of the SMEs sector.

He said the firm would this year consider creating a fund specifically for SMEs in the agriculture sector. He noted that the agriculture sector was among other fast growing sectors hence the need for enhanced funding which would result in sector sustainability and significant contributions to the country's national development.

"A thriving entrepreneurial culture always depends on the ability to access funding that is sensitive to the needs of the community, critical to this turn-around is the need for companies to adopt the changing landscape of finance to micro, small and medium enterprises," he said.

He however said poor loan repayment systerm by clients remained a major challenge which was negatively affecting the financial sector in the country.

"As EFC we have put in place measure to help curb this vice, we have introduced a client ownership programme where if a client re-pay on time there are given shares in the company but then they have to go through a number of stages for them to qualify to get shares," he said.

Despite the re-branding, Mr Lafond said his company would continue being innovative by offering services needed by the clients and deliver tangible growth to SMEs and translate in wealth creation.

He said that EFC would strive to growth so that it can further grow its market share which was current standing at 40 per cent under its deposits taking and 60 per cent under financing respectively.

Times of Zambia/22/02/2012