ZANZIBAR: NMB on Wednesday said its agriculture financing has climbed to 1.6tri/- as of last year as it seeks to make the sector more sustainable and enhance its contribution to economic growth.
The lender’s Chief Executive Officer, Ms Ruth Zaipuna, was speaking at the three-day Association of Local Authorities Tanzania 38th annual meeting, outlining the bank’s catalytic financing to key economic sectors like agriculture to support the government efforts in driving up the socio-economic development agenda.
“Our significant successes in agriculture financing have been the continuous investment in sector knowledge, products and key partnerships with key stakeholders,” she said.
Ms Zaipuna said 400bn/- out of 1.6tri/- total agriculture loans were extended to farmers at a single digit interest rate of 9.0 per cent.
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The 1.6tri/- was dished out in over two years ago. She told over 500 ALAT delegates that the lender has been bankrolling sectoral growth, funding social welfare, supporting the government’s fiscal initiatives and participating in advancing inclusive finance.
The seasoned banker said the monumental contribution to bettering lives and aiding wealth generation would have been impossible without government endorsement which NMB works closely with in many development facets at all levels.
Ms Zaipuna said the lender’s constructive engagements in national development also include the huge corporate social investments it makes to support communities, citing the 8.0bn/-set aside for this year.
Out of that, she explained, 2.5bn/- will be used to build a special secondary school in Dodoma and the remaining amount will be invested in the priority sectors of the bank’s corporate giving policy, notably education, health and entrepreneurship.
The bank’s other recent major corporate philanthropy undertaking has been the Nuru Yangu Scholarship and Mentorship Programme which to date has provided scholarships to 130 bright college students hailing from poor families.
On the financial inclusion front, Ms Zaipuna said, NMB continues relentlessly to include Tanzanians, especially those living upcountry into the formal financial sector and has recently debuted a special village banking strategy for them.
“NMB continues to take its services closer to the people and this year we launched a grand village banking scheme targeting to cover more than 1,000 villages without access to formal financial services, which initially will be served by agents,” she noted in her remarks.
Implementation of the strategy has included the use of the revolutionary NMB Pesa Account service where an opening amount is 1,000/- The other major merit of the account is its instant connection to NMB Mkononi which enables customers to access up to 500,000/- unsecured Mshiko Fasta digital loans without visiting an NMB branch.
“Since we officially launched it about two months ago, we have been able to open over 100,000 NMB Pesa accounts and the target is to open over 1.5 million new accounts by the end of this year,” Ms Zaipuna pointed out.
Attainment of the goal and accomplishing the noble village banking mission, she explained, is pegged on increasing the number of agents who have now increased to 34,000 across the country compared to only 10,000 in 2021.
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