Wiseman Khuzwayo
The Jobs Fund had received 2 651 applications during its first funding period, which closed on July 31, the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) said yesterday.
Of these applications, 1 641 were not eligible, seven have been approved and the balance are still being taken through the bank’s investment committee approval process.
The development finance institution said it was estimated that the allocation would realise a projected 115 226 sustainable jobs.
The bank said its investment committee had approved a total of R352 million for employment creation projects, although the proposals in the first funding period totalled R320m worth of grant funding.
The Jobs Fund is a R9 billion employment creation programme. It is an initiative of the government and was announced by Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan in June. It is aimed at curbing the scourge of high unemployment.
Managed by the DBSA, the primary mandate of the fund is to create sustainable employment by helping in the expansion of existing business enterprises.
The DBSA said the fund aimed at disbursing and approving R2bn for projects in the 2011/12 financial year.
The group added: “The first recipients of the fund will receive disbursements as soon as all the conditions of approval and contracting are finalised. Correspondence to ineligible and successful applicants is in the process of being sent to the relevant parties.”
The fund hopes to pilot innovative approaches to employment creation. It operates on the basis of a comparative process, allocating funds to projects that show promise and speak to the fund’s fundamental mandate of job creation.
Dumisa Hlatshwayo, the chief investment officer of the fund, said it was important to note that the fund did not guarantee that a project would be approved because it created jobs. There was competition for resources and value for money had to be taken into account.
He said: “Some applicants failed to comply with the requirements of the Jobs Fund. For example, in some applications the required co-funding was not taken into consideration at all.
“In certain instances, the applicants presented ideas or feasibilities with no track record of implementation as required for approval by the fund.”
In an effort to educate and support the applicants as well as strive to improve on the quality of future applications, Hlatshwayo said the fund would soon embark on provincial briefing sessions.
“We seek to meaningfully engage our stakeholders. These sessions will be used to share the lessons learnt during this current funding period, as well as to illustrate the entire Jobs Fund value chain.
“We will also deploy our project managers to provinces… for them to be accessible both to the potential applicants as well as to grant beneficiaries of the Jobs Fund,” Hlatshwayo said.