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MR. JOSEPH M. MATALON

CHAIRMAN, DBJ

WELCOME

LAUNCH OF DBJ PRODUCTS

KNUTSFORD COURT HOTEL

OCTOBER 21, 2015

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Good morning ladies and gentlemen, the Development Bank of Jamaica is enormously pleased to welcome you to this morning’s launch of three of our products that are aimed at improving the facilities and services for the small and medium-sized enterprises sector.

I would like to extend a warm and very special welcome to the Minister of Finance and Planning, Dr. the Hon. Peter Phillips who has graciously agreed to address us and, as usual, pass on important nuggets of advice and information related to the Government’s policy direction.

By agreeing to participate in this event, we believe that the Minister is acknowledging the significance of not only the small and medium-sized business sector to the well-being of our country but also of the importance of the DBJ to Jamaica’s economic growth and development.

And so I want to thank Dr Phillips for taking time from his very busy programme to be with us here this morning.

I would also like to acknowledge four specially invited guests who will be signing memorandum of understandings with the DBJ later this morning at this event. They are Ms. Valerie Veira, CEO of the Jamaica Business Development Corporation; Mr Metry Seaga, President of the Jamaica Manufacturers Association; Mrs Lisa Lake, CEO of The Branson Centre for Entrepreneurship and Mr William Mahfood, President of the Private Sector Organisation.

The JMA, JBDC and Branson Centre will be DBJ’s partners in selecting the innovation projects and monitoring their progress for two years under the IGNITE pilot project. While the PSOJ will be managing the voucher project in terms of issuing vouchers as well as monitoring the progress of all the recipients.

Your presence here is recognition that the DBJ is doing some things right in its efforts to support the business community and create the right environment for an improvement in our quality of life across the socio-economic spectrum.

And indeed I would like to highlight a few areas in which we at the DBJ are particularly proud of our performance.

In the last financial year, we have delivered in practically every way that we said we would. We met or exceeded our targets:

- By delivering total investments of $28 billion, surpassing the target by 13%, in lending, divestments and public-private partnerships.

- Secondly, in supplying credit of $4.3 billion to micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, putting us 36% ahead of the targeted $3 billion. And this represented well over 9,000 loans to MSMEs.

- Thirdly, we had set ourselves a target to ensure that at least 28% of the Bank’s loan portfolio consisted of MSME loans. Well, we doubled that target, taking the ratio of MSME loans to total number of loans to 56%.

- Fourthly, we set ourselves the objective of increasing the number of new businesses supported by the DBJ. And here, we focused on startups – particularly their challenges in accessing financing by providing business development support. We assisted 62 new businesses, surpassing the target of 50; and

- Finally, but definitely not the least of our achievements, is the considerable cost savings from privatisations and public-private partnerships that the DBJ has facilitated for the Government of Jamaica. A target of $50 million was set but it was significantly exceeded with actual cost savings of some J$345 million; a result of the divestment of Windalco.

We have no intention of slowing down the progress and today’s launch of three of the Bank’s new and improved facilities is proof of our determination to play our part in ensuring that Jamaica meets its Vision 2030 goals.

The three products - IGNITE, Voucher for Technical Assistance and Credit Enhancement Facility – are well-structured and designed to meet the capital, capacity and collateral needs (in that order) of small and medium-sized businesses who have great ideas but find it difficult to either get started or to expand.

As you will hear later on this morning, two of the three products have already produced fantastic results and we have no doubt that the third product, IGNITE (which is brand new) will be equally as successful.

We could not have done any of this – set our goals and met our targets – without your help and support. Your assistance has helped to increase the applications for SME loans and the CEF and, going forward, we want to strengthen the relationship with all of you, our partners and stakeholders – the approved financial institutions, micro finance institutions, trade associations, and other business groups.

We have taken a step forward in this regard by amending our policy to expand our lending channels, thereby adding new approved financial institutions to our existing slate of partners.

We appreciate your assistance and welcome you unreservedly to this launch today.

Thank you.

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