The President of the Republic, Daniel Chapo, has expressed his concern at the low level of participation by entrepreneurs in the Mutual Guarantee Fund (FGM), which provides 40 million dollars for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.

“What we want to say at the moment is that this amount, around 40 million US dollars, is available on the newsstands. At the moment, we're talking about 2.1 billion meticais, but the level of uptake of this fund is still not significant,” he lamented.

Speaking yesterday in Maputo at the opening of the 20th edition of CASP 2025 - a Public-Private Dialogue Business Conference - the Head of State said that the Executive intends to expand the Fund to 120 million dollars.

“But it will only be possible to execute this 120 million US dollars if our private sector takes the money from the bank on the basis of the Loan Guarantee Fund,” he said.

Chapo acknowledged that one of the reasons for the Fund's low take-up was its poor “publicity”. He called for greater publicity to improve awareness of what the Fund is and how to join it.

The Loan Guarantee Fund was created by Decree 37/2024, of June 10, and launched on August 25 by the President of the Republic at the 60th Maputo International Fair. In this first phase, the amount already available since September is expected to benefit around 15,000 MSMEs.

The institutions operating the Fund are Absa, Banco Comercial e de Investimento, Standard Bank Moçambique, and Millennium bim - which signed a memorandum during the opening of CASP 2025.