Invest in women-Kaliati

Malawi’s Minister of Gender, Community Development, and Social Welfare, Patricia Kaliati has urged financial institutions in the country to invest in women by providing them with loans that would enable them to boost up their small-scale businesses and remain economically empowered.

Speaking on the sidelines of the press briefing which was held on Thursday at Capital Hill in Lilongwe, Kaliati said that financial institutions in the country especially banks should provide loans to women with reasonable conditions.

“There are some banks which ask women to deposit money to their bank accounts for three months in order for them to be given loans and this is very unfortunate because if the women had money they could not have asked for a loan.

“Therefore, it is my plea to the banks that they should be lenient to women from low income generating families so that they should have easy access to loans that would help to support their small scale businesses,” Kaliati said.

She, therefore, encouraged women to form groups that would make money lending institutions build trust and provide them with loans without a doubt.

She also tipped the women who want loans but they do not have businesses to at least embark on any simple businesses as one way of motivating money lending institutions to provide them with loans.

“We are encouraging women who have no businesses to start up small businesses such as; poultry, banana and soya farming or any other simple business, through that we are hoping that banks would be encouraged to provide loans to these women,” she said.

She also said that among other initiatives the government is currently providing funds to women from underprivileged households through the social cash transfer as one way of boosting up their social-economic growth.

In her remarks, United Nations (UN) Women Malawi Representative, Clara Anyangwe said that they are also helping the government in making sure that women in the country have access to productive resources.

“We are making sure that women have access to markets for their commodities such as farm products, we are also ensuring that women have information related to financial management and access to credit.

“Above all, we are also supporting women farmers on value addition to their farm products, and on this, we are looking at specific agricultural value chains such as; beans and rice value chain,” she said.