The Democratic Alliance (DA) can reveal that the Small Business Innovation Fund (SBIF), which was launched with much fanfare by Small Business Development Minister, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni in November last year, had only reached 50% of its target by the deadline of end-December 2019.
This was revealed in response to a DA parliamentary question.
The DA will request that the Minister appear before Parliament’s Small Business Development Portfolio Committee in this regard.
Minister Ntshavheni previously announced that the SBIF would be aimed at promoting and facilitating funding of entrepreneurship and innovation in key industry sectors, targeting under-serviced small, medium and micro-enterprises (SMMEs) in the early stages of the business development cycle for ideation, proof of concept, early stage market entry and business scale-up.
At the time, she said that the Small Enterprise Finance Agency (SEFA) had started approving applications for funding and had a target to have approved R450 million from the SBIF by the end of December 2019. However, the Minister’s reply to our question reports that“[t]otal SBIF approvals by December 2019 stood at R225 million”, to the detriment of the small business development imperative.
This lacklustre performance of the SBIF against the Minister’s promised target and deadline is indicative of the longstanding under-capacity of the Department and its entities, which render them unable to meet the massive need for financing and other business support on the SMME landscape.
This has been demonstrated in the way that the Department managed its relief assistance response to the needs of small businesses through the SMME Relief Fund during the national lockdown.
Many deserving small businesses and sole proprietors have been left in the lurch due to woefully inadequate provision of resources, processing errors and ongoing glitches.
It is patently unfair that enterprises and employees who have been contributing to government coffers through their taxes over the years are now unable to receive assistance from the government at a time of their greatest need for a lifeline.
This is all thanks to years of corruption and mismanagement under the ANC, which resulted in the government having no financial cushion to help absorb the blow of this economic shock.
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