News

Small and micro business grant applicants yet to receive funding

April 21, 2015 1:39 am

Fijians who have applied for the small and micro business grant this year will soon receive their funding.

The Fiji Development Bank will oversee the grant allocation of $1million set aside for the development of Micro and small businesses.

Trade Minister Faiyaz Koya says 25,789 applications have been received.

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This is an overwhelming response since the government only projected 1000 successful applicants to receive funding.

Koya says that after a week of site inspections they’ve sifted through the applications and are now left with around 7000 applications.

‘’Not all have applied for $1000, some may have been $500 so just on average about a thousand applicants that applied for $1000 but because of the enormous amount of applications we’re looking to see if we can accommodate more, we may be able to somehow or the other and we’ll see’’.

People with particular sets of skills like handicraft, small scale fruit and vegetable sellers, farmers, market vendors, crop sellers, tailors and other legitimate form of micro and small and micro businesses have applied for the grant.

The successful applicants are expected to receive funding in the next two weeks.