Jamii Bora bank, Kenya’s fastest growing bank, with a dedicated customer base of over 300,000 and 28 outlets countrywide, has made known its support for youth, women, and persons with disabilities.

This was disclosed during a meeting yesterday, when the Chief Commercial Officer of the bank, Mr. Timothy Kabiru, and the Cabinet Secretary of the Ministry of Devolution and Planning, Ms. Anne Waiguru, met and agreed to take up various collaborative initiative, in order to support youth, women, and persons with disabilities for infrastructure and agri-business projects on a county and national level.

According to a press release made available to CEOAFRICA by the bank on Thursday, this effort followed the announcement by the government to allocate 30% of all tenders to youth, women and persons with disabilities.

In line with this, the bank has said it will finance all organizations participating in the tenders under the program through issues of bid bonds, performance bonds, LPO financing and invoice discounting with favourable credit requirement.

 The release also revealed that the government is currently in the process of registering and pre-qualifying enterprises owned by youth, women, and persons with disabilities under the Access to Government Procurement Opportunities (AGPO) programme, also noting that special interest groups, will stand a chance to benefit from over Sh300 billion of the Sh1 trillion allocated to public procurement in this year’s budget.

Jamii  Bora bank, having identified that youth, women, and persons with disabilities will still  face a major challenge of high capital required in the procurement of tender, despite that government has waived several requirements to encourage special interest groups to participate in procurement, including scrapping capital minimums and tender fees, has said it will offer various financial instruments such as LPO financing, and invoice discounting to these enterprise, alongside other institutions such as Uwezo Fund and women enterprise funds.

The bank has also agreed to re-finance all Uwezo Fund beneficiaries who demonstrate outstanding repayments records and strong management capabilities, guaranteeing the beneficiaries a continuous source of funding after their businesses outgrow the Uwezo Fund.

Furthermore, the bank has partnered with ATIX, a business advisory company for SMEs, to provide training on how to bid for government contracts as well as assist in company/business name registration, registration with treasuries at both county and national level, completion of tender documents as well as follow ups on the procurement process of tenders.

According to the bank, some of the contracts already up for award are the supply and delivery of flowers, provision of cleaning services, photography and videography, and supply and delivery of mobile airtime.

Jamii Bora bank noted that its main focus however will continue to be on leveraging technology to enable customers and all its  stakeholders have access to a truly robust financial service that will enhance and transform their lifestyles anywhere, anytime and enabling them to do anything.