{"id":54936,"date":"2017-10-12T10:05:43","date_gmt":"2017-10-12T08:05:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=54936"},"modified":"2017-10-12T10:05:50","modified_gmt":"2017-10-12T08:05:50","slug":"minister-speaks-tough-on-high-interest-rates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2017\/10\/12\/minister-speaks-tough-on-high-interest-rates\/","title":{"rendered":"Minister speaks tough on high interest rates"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>M<\/strong>inister of Industry, Trade and Tourism, Henry Mussa, has asked commercial banks to be more flexible on the terms and conditions they offer to borrowers.<\/p>\n<p>Mussa said such a move will be key to the growth of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).<\/p>\n<p>The minister was speaking during a Trade Breakfast in Lilongwe recently. The breakfast meeting was organised by pan-African banking group, Ecobank.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cInterest rates that banks are currently offering are preventing a lot of SMEs to access loans to grow their businesses,\u201d Mussa said.<\/p>\n<p>He said conditions such as collateral security are preventing business prosperity.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere must be deliberate policies that will see our SMEs grow,\u201d Mussa said.<\/p>\n<p>Ecobank Chief Executive Officer, Charles Asiedu, said that interest rates are determined by a number of macroeconomic factors which, if checked, would make the rates go down as has been the case in recent months.<\/p>\n<p>Asiedu was quick to mention that when the rates are high, banks do not make profits due to high default rates.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBanks do not benefit from a regime of high interest rates. We are better off giving money to a few customers who can pay back even if the interest is smaller than giving loans to people at a higher interest and they fail to pay,\u201d Asiedu said.<\/p>\n<p>He said that the banking sector is excited with current trades as there are high chances that many people will be able to borrow and pay back the money on time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism, Henry Mussa, has asked commercial banks to be more flexible on the terms and conditions they offer to borrowers. Mussa said such a move will be key to the growth of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The minister was speaking during a Trade Breakfast in Lilongwe recently. The breakfast [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":46534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54936"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54945,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54936\/revisions\/54945"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}