Minister of Trade and Industry visits Nyaruguru district for talks over “Hanga Umurimo” Programme

Rwanda’s Minister for Trade and Industry (MINICOM), François Kanimba, on Wednesday made a one-day work visit to Nyaruguru district, Southern Rwanda, to have talks with the district officials in an effort to boost the level of how the Nyaruguru population embrace the country’s “Hanga Umurimo” (create a job) Programme throughout the ongoing twofold 2013-2014 budget year.

The Hanga Umurimo Programme, which an online document by MINICOM defines as “an initiative aimed at generating jobs that are not farm based”, hit a record low participation in Nyaruguru district over the last twofold 2012-2013 financial year, with just two projects securing bank loans out of ten projects that had applied for bank loans through Hanga Umurimo Programme, Nyaruguru officials said.

“In Nyaruguru, this programme [Hanga Umurimo] faced the challenge based mainly on the fact that the district doesn’t have commercial banks. I have been informed [by district officials] that when the programme started, there was only Banque Populaire, which also was facing some particular problems by then, which couldn’t allow it to give out loan money on many projects”, said Minister Kanimba.

“And that alone was a challenge for people within Hanga Umurimo, who had to travel to Nyamagabe [a neighbouring district] to present their projects to banks there. But what is important now is that, despite that challenge, Hanga Umurimo is still up and running”, the MINICOM boss hastened to add.

And the district has not stayed aloof from the situation.

According to Nyaruguru district Mayor, François Habitegeko, the district has been wooing a number of local commercial banks like Bank of Kigali and COGEBANQUE into setting up their branches in the area.

“BK [Bank of Kigali] is ready to come here”, said Mayor Habitegeko.

This news website understands that, unlike the previous phase of Hanga Umurimo, this new stint of Hanga Umurimo Programme mainly targets small-income, not too much demanding projects and therefore the Saccos (savings and credit cooperatives) – now available in almost every sector of Rwanda – will be easing the task of giving out bank loans even to otherwise rural districts like Nyaruguru with little or no presence of mainly town-based commercial banks.

To-date, up to 41 projects through Hanga Umurimo Programme are now pending for bank loans in Nyaruguru – carpentry projects are reported to rank among those.

According to an article on the MINICOM website, during the Hanga Umurimo Programme’s pilot phase, a selection of 1,500 high potential business ideas were selected countrywide, 50 from each of Rwanda’s 30 districts. To improve access to finance, the Business Development Fund has allocated a guarantee fund for Hanga Umurimo Programme to provide a 75 percent guarantee for entrepreneurs.

Rwanda’s Vision 2020 targets to create 3.2 million off-farm jobs by the year 2020. And inspired with both this vision and the national policy on small and medium enterprises, MINICOM has introduced Hanga Umurimo Programme to help contribute to rapid growth of enterprises.