The Acting Director for MSME Fiji Faizal Khan

The Ministry of Trade is working on drafting an access to capital Bill that consists of a concept of innovative financing mechanisms that will allow small businesses to borrow and access funds on an online platform.

This was revealed by the Acting Director for MSME Fiji Faizal Khan during the ministry’s public consultation in Labasa earlier this week.

Khan says the majority of small business owners are not granted loans because they fail to comply with the requirements of financial institutions.

“Compliance is something most business fail to adhere to; that is the law that a particular business has to follow, like if you are running a restaurant there is a health license that you have to comply with, there’s a town council compliance, there is OHS, there is FNPF and there is tax, all of those compliance are hard for small businesses.”

Khan adds this new way of accessing funds will boost small businesses.

“So basically what we have presented today is three new concepts, basically know as alternative ways of raising finance and what we have today is access to capital Bill, it is still a draft law and what it hopes to introduce to Fiji is three alternative ways of raising finance, one is small offers, the other one is equity crowd funding and the third one is peer to peer lending.”

Public consultations are being conducted around Fiji to gather feedbacks on the proposed Capital Bill from key stakeholders before seeking cabinet approval.