By KENNEDY MUPESENI –
THE Citizens Economic Empowerment Commission (CEEC) has recruited more debt collectors to improve loan collection from beneficiaries.
The CEEC recorded a drastic drop of 59.5 per cent in loan recoveries in 2014.
From a targeted collection of K20 million in 2014, the CEEC only managed to recover K11.9million, owing to the lack of debt collectors.
Giving an overview of the loan performance for 2014, Commission head of communication and public relations Glenda Masebe said the targeted amount did not much the actual collection due to inadequate debt collectors.
“This can to a large extent be attributed to the limited number of debt collectors and lack of awareness for the empowerment fund beneficiaries who used to think CEEC loans were for free,” Ms Masebe said.
She said K49 million was disbursed from the K50 million empowerment fund targeted for empowerment in 2013.
Ms Masebe said the 2008 to 2012 portfolio was being valued to normalise the tracking of the loan payments rate.
“We have problems with previous loans, because the target was not specified as in which sector to fund that is why we are valuing the 2008-2012 portfolios to normalise the tracking of loan repayment rates,” she said.
Ms Masebe said  CEEC was looking at 90 per cent project financing to rural areas with 40 per cent youth promoted projects and 30 per cent women promoted projects while the rest would go to other groups under the cluster and value chain programme.
This would increase citizens’ access to business opportunities especially that the CEEC Act focused on preferential procurement and reservation schemes.
To increase debt collection the CEEC had introduced pre-financing training, adding that recipients for 366 projects approved in 2014 were currently receiving pre-financing training.
At the end of 2014, the number of clients funded was 1,156 compared to the target of 1,600 projects earmarked to be funded.