Government to resumes giving out YEDEF loans

The Malawi government has said will in September this year resume disbursement of Youth Enterprise Development Fund YEDEF loans, almost three months after the exercised was stopped.

The ministry of youth stopped the loan disbursement to track down defaulters, most of them party diehards.

“We have discovered that there has been a great number of defaulters and several other irregularities so once we are temporarily stopping the disbursement,” Minister Enoch Chihana was quoted as saying the time the loan was stopped.

But in an interview on Saturday, Principal Secretary Alex Mseka said disbursement of the loan will resume in September because they have managed to recover some repayments.

“For the past months we have registered a 40% repayment rate and it is coming up to 50 %. Previously it was at 17% which was not helpful at all because this is a revolving fund,” said Mseka.

Late President Bingu wa Mutharika introduced the loan in 2009 to make the youth self reliant through small scale businesses but the initiative was heavily politicised by the former ruling party.

Some beneficiaries who got the loan openly used to say the loan was a ‘thank you’ from the President and would not repay back.

Perhaps the misconception rose from President Mutharika’s speech when he launched the initiative that DPP followers should be prioritised.