As an organisation we share grief with families who have lost their loved ones on the recent spate of killings and kidnappings of young woman and kids. I echo sentiments of devastation and, I support the symbolic solidarity which we embarked upon on Monday 29th May 2017.

On May 18th 2017, the Honourable Minister of Small Business Development, Ms Lindiwe Zulu presented her budget speech for 2017/18. Some of the highlights of her speech pertaining to sefa include our contribution in the pursuit of radical socio-economic transformation, our role in supporting small businesses so as to boost entrepreneurial activity in the country and, further urging us to deliver to the best of our ability despite the tight budget we have and tough economic conditions.

Against this background, there is higher expectations on sefa and, we need to think out of the box and increase our financial support to SMMEs and Co-operatives in order to have a meaningful contribution to the South African economy.

We must go an extra mile this financial year to ensure that we scale up our efforts and contributions by constructively assisting those who come knocking on our doors. Even importantly we must proactively seek viable and sustainable deals. In doing this, let us not forget to follow up on our existing clients to ‘pay back the money’ so that we can extend our support to more entrepreneurs.

June is the last month of the first quarter of the 2018 FY. Please be diligent on quality deals to ensure that we overcome high and rising levels of impairments?

I know most of you would be interested to know the status of the previous year’s performance targets. Unfortunately, I cannot say much as we are still being audited. Once this process is complete the board will look at the results and we can share with you the final performance results. We also presented our results to parliament earlier last month it was not breath-taking of performance but I am confident with more effort we can do better.