BoA vows more support to SMEs

Mr Owusu- Amoah

The Bank of Africa Tanzania Limited (BoA) has promised to increase its support to operators of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to enhance their contribution to the country’s economy.

The bank’s Managing Director, Mr Ammish Owusu- Amoah, told a news conference over the weekend that BoA has already developed several products that target SMEs in the country.

“The bank seeks to provide swift financing solutions and upscale the SME community to higher levels,” he said, adding that the bank’s SME portfolio has grown significantly over the last few years.

Mr Ammish said advances to customers in 2012 increased almost 31 per cent compared to the previous year and that most of them went to SMEs. “This demonstrates our commitment to grow with the SMEs,” he said.

Explaining further, he said, the bank’s branch network focuses on key SMEs areas such as Tunduma, Mbeya urban, Moshi, Arusha, Mwanza, Morogoro, Kahama and Mtibwa. 

He said the bank provides banking support to transporters, distributors, suppliers of different goods to big companies, hotels and importers of goods from Asia.

He noted that besides availing these financing options for the SMEs sector, the bank understands the challenges that this sector faces and therefore customizes solutions for some small and medium business owners to enable them go about their business activities and increase productivity.

He said the bank increased its customer deposits by 17 per cent to 264bn/- last year, a period plagued with tight liquidity and high inflation rate.He said the bank’s performance indicators reflected resilience to turbulence experienced by the industry and the economy in general during the 2011 and 2012 period.

“This performance is attributed to an aggressive sales force,” he said, adding that the overall pre-profit doubled to 3.3bn/- in 2012. Since it started operations in the country in 2007, the bank has managed to open ten branches in Dar es Salaam and eight in other parts of the country including Morogoro, Tunduma, Mwanza, Moshi, Mbeya, Arusha, Mtibwa and Kahama.

Bank of Africa Tanzania is a part of a Pan African bank called Bank of Africa Group. The Group operates in 15 countries, where seven are in West Africa (Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger and Senegal); six in East Africa (Burundi, Djibouti, Kenya, Madagascar, Tanzania and Uganda).

Source: The Daily News, dailynews.co.tz, reported from Dar es Salaam

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