BoA dishes out 73bn/- to SMEs by June 30, this year

Adam Mihayo, BoA managing director and CEO unveiled this in Dar es Salaam over the weekend when opening the workshop that involved a number of SMEs themed: “Lets grow together”, which was meant to equip them with comprehensive financial education, the best way to store commercial records, detailed discussions on various tax topics, and strategies to increase the capacity of banking services to stimulate capital growth.

Mihayo said last year, the bank has released loans worth 57bn/- to SMEs.

“This indicates that this year we’ll provide more loans than last year," he said.

“I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all our clients of BoT for continuing to support us and I also appeal to Tanzanian entrepreneurs, that the bank is ready to ensure their success, as the responsibility of our workshop as our motto says "Let's Grow Together". The bank is determined to continue investing in this sector. This is clearly expressed in the three-year strategic plan of our bank, relying on investing 88bn/- for the year 2022-2024.”

Mihayo noted: "The bank has also been able to have good results in non-performing loans (NPLs) and in the period up to June 30, the bank has reached 1.5 percent of non-performing loans, this is less than the level required by the Bank of Tanzania (BOT) of 5 percent. These results tell us that our customers are good and good payers of their loans."

He also said: "In the three-year strategic plan, we see SMEs as a very sensitive sector so we’ve prioritized it in a very unique way, including providing financial training to our customers. Statistics show that this sector contributes about 30 percent of the national income and in every 10 businesses, 9 are SMEs, so it is very important to ensure that we empower them.”

"Since we started these workshops in 2021, the bank has already reached 300 customers and the goal for this year is to reach 150 customers. The fruits of what we are doing are reflected in the good results we are witnessing, including the growth of loans by 14 percent, the growth of customer deposits by percent 22 percent. And what gives us more motivation is the growth of the bank's profit by 88 percent, this is by comparing the results of June last year and June this year," said Mihayo.

Ninael Mndeme, Bank's SMEs department has assured the businessmen that credit services will be provided on time without delay in accordance with banking regulations in the country.

"For us, the customer can get banking services throughout our branches, but the bank has also invested in digital services such as mobile banking services (B-Mobile), internet banking services (BOAWeb-Internet Banking) and we have recently launched the BoA agents’ service and now we’ve more than 200 agents across the country," said Ninael.

Some of the businessmen who attended the workshop lauded the bank for the way it enabled them through loans and to raise their business where they have asked the bank to continue to improve its services to benefit more.