Wednesday, December 07, 2011

National Development Bank gets K130 million

THE National Development Bank got a huge recapitalisation of K130 million in the budget, The National reports.
It will enable the NDB to roll out its micro-bank plans in the provinces.
It is understood that the bank had specifically requested for the amount through Agriculture Minister Sir Puka Temu who tabled its submission in cabinet a month ago.
At a NDB director’s dinner at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Port Moresby, Sir Puka had promised the
bank that he would take up the matter after he was briefed of its record performance of generating profit this year since it’s restructure in 2007 and the first profit in 2009.
At the budget lock-up yesterday, the executive di­rector of the Institute of National Affairs Paul Barker said he hoped that there would be a careful scrutiny of the bank because of the huge allocation.
In response, Finance Minister Don Polye said there would be specific directions given to the bank to ensure that it operated under stringent guidelines.
It was also raised that a lot of money was given to political cronies by the bank in the past which were not recovered.
NDB executive manager (accounting and finance) Moses Liu said NDB had completely turned around with independent directors on the board and good management resulting in it being profitable.
He said the 2011 financial results would show that the bank had made a huge turn-around to record its highest net profit since its inception in 1967.
The budget allocation of K130 million would be broken down as follows: Agriculture credit support – K100 million, Tourism credit support – K5 million, Local business guarantee scheme – K10 million, Small Medium Enterprises development programme – K10 million and Fisheries credit support – K5 million.
One of the initiatives the NDB and wanted to introduce early next year under the K100 million submission was the re-introduction of the Stret Pasin Stoa concept.
This is where a husband and wife team manage a shop (mini-supermarket) built by NDB and later own it after NDB has recovered its cost

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