Africa-Press – Zimbabwe. CBZ Bank Limited has secured a US$10 million factoring and supply chain finance credit line from Afreximbank for on-lending to the country’s small to medium enterprises (SMEs).
The deal was signed yesterday on the sidelines of Intra-African Trade Fair 2025 in Algiers, Algeria.
CBZ managing director Valeta Mthimkhulu signed on the behalf of the bank, while Afreximbank was represented by Kanayo Awani, executive vice-president Intra-African Trade and Export Development Bank.
Zimbabwean SMEs have been struggling to access financing from financial institutions, which insist on collateral, with experts saying factoring is the way forward as a business can sell its accounts receivable (invoices) to a third party to meet short-term liquidity needs.
The third party will then provide liquidity to the firm and the company will pay back using the money it will later receive through the account receivables.
Speaking to journalists after signing the deal, Mthimkhulu said CBZ was the first local bank to access the facility.
“The role that factoring plays is that it makes it easier for our SMEs to access different forms of open account financing and also it is an important driver of financial inclusion,” she said.
Mthimkhulu said the bank had on-boarded onto the Africa Trade Gateway, a single window for digital services, in partnership with the African Union.
“I do believe that this milestone will make financing more accessible to SMEs in Zimbabwe, drive financial growth and take out some of the costs that are there that have been preventing some of the SMEs from thriving,” she said.
“It is an exciting milestone for us and we do believe that this is one of the steps that will move Zimbabwe forward in terms of making financing accessible to our SMEs to continue to drive financial inclusion.”
Factoring volumes in Africa nearly doubled to €41,8 billion in 2023 from €21,6 billion in 2017.
Research carried out by the International Finance Corporation estimates that there are 44 million micro, small and medium enterprises that make up 90% of the private sector, employing almost 80% of Africans.
However, the SMEs are being starved of the capital required to grow and absorb the growing labour force.
More than half of the SMEs require more finance than they can access to grow their businesses creating an estimated SME finance gap of US$331 billion in Africa.
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