FINANCING OF SMEs : CCA-Bank and IFC Sign a 10 Billion FCFA Agreement
The country representative in the Central African subregion of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) Sylvain Kakou, and Marguerite Fonkwen Atanga, Director General Designate of the African Community Credit (CCA-Bank), signed a partnership agreement, ending June in Yaoundé.
The terms of the said agreement stipulates that the World Bank subsidiary allows the bank, through a line of credit of 10 billion FCFA (16.6 million dollars) opened by the IFC, to facilitate the granting of loans to micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), with emphasis on businesses owned and led by women.
Marguerite Fonkwen Atanga, Director General Designate of the CCA-Bank, says 25 % of this financing (2.5 billion FCFA) will be exclusively granted to female entrepreneurship, given that, out of the 28 million Cameroonians, the female segment represents about 52 % of which more than half active, is aged between 15-60 years.
The private sector will grana credit institution 58.5 % controlled by Afrigroup Holding of Cameroonian businessman Albert Nkemla. These financial resources are generally aimed at supporting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) present in Cameroon.
“The partnership that is being signed today between CCA and the IFC is timely to facilitate the sustainable financing of local micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, women’s entrepreneurship, through the CCA-Women Banking Program and support foreign trade operations via the network of correspondent banks,” she explained.
Read the entire newspaper (PDF) by clicking on the link below : https://abelainfo.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/008-La-voix-des-entreprises_Mise-en-page-1.pdf
It is in this vein that on June 5, CCA-Bank and SFI initialed an agreement in Abidjan, Ivory Coast of US $ 5 million or 3 billion FCFA to support international trade operations for CCA-Bank customers. The objective is to allow the bank to “better address the need to import its solid pipeline of SMEs and multinationals”.
Created in 1997 as a cooperative savings and credit company, CCA-Bank has been a universal bank since May 2018 and currently has 47 branches spread over the 10 regions of Cameroon. The choice made on this Cameroonian bank by SFI is therefore explained by the fact that the latter supports SMEs ; engines the national economy to more than 70 %. The new partnership between IFC and CCA-Bank also aims to strengthen a new page in the development of banking activities in Cameroon, especially in the field of SMEs as part of their activities.
Sylvain Kakou, points out that the IFC’s support equally aims at technical assistance for strengthening CCA-Bank’s institutional and operational capacities to increase its efficiency and its service offer to clients, crisis management, corporate governance as well as improving its information system and resource management.
For the moment, CCA-Bank has not made official the conditions to be fulfilled by SMEs in order to capture part of the financing that has just been granted. The Top management of the banking institution nevertheless recalled that the continuous improvement of the quality of service through digital transformation, taking into account the diaspora component and the agricultural sector are among other main lines of its agenda.
SN
