Zulu monarch King Goodwill Zwelithini, has lambasted commercial banks for ignoring rural development banks.
|||Zulu monarch King Goodwill Zwelithini, has called for the establishment of a rural development bank to help rural communities in KwaZulu-Natal who are not served by the major commercial banks.
Speaking on Wednesday, at a conference titled “Rethinking Rural Development in KwaZulu-Natal”, Zwelithini said the proposed co-operative bank would have to focus on financing rural development projects.
The three-day conference, which was organised by the king and the Ingonyama Land Trust, marks the official launch of the Ingonyama Rural Development Forum, an informal network of traditional leaders, experts, research institutions, businesses and policy-makers charged with crafting policies to speed up rural development in KZN.
In his address, the king urged traditional leaders and various experts on development to work together towards the setting up of the bank.
“The bank I am proposing could be the solution to the problem of rural communities, who are always regarded with suspicion by commercial banks,” said the king.
“It could also help to attract investments into rural areas, as its focus would be on rural development.”
He said the attitudes of the major commercial banks and big business towards rural people needed to change radically and that rural communities needed to be integrated into the mainstream of business and South African life.
The king singled out the preconditions placed by commercial banks on rural people seeking business loans, saying these differed from the preconditions used for people in urban areas, who had easier access to business finance.
He did not elaborate on how the proposed bank would be set up, but said the secretariat of his rural development forum had commissioned a number of research projects on rural development policies.
These, he said, would culminate in the production of the KZN Rural Development and Land Management Blueprint.
The group chief executive of the Ithala Development Finance Corporation, Yvonne Zwane, told the gathering that her organisation viewed itself as playing the role of a rural development bank. But the king disagreed, saying that Ithala was not visible in rural areas.
Addressing the same gathering, the deputy chairman of the Ingonyama Land Trust Judge Jerome Ngwenya, also hit out at commercial banks for refusing to finance businesses operating in trust land.
He said the Ingonyama Land Trust controlled almost 40 percent of the land in KZN and that land was available for commercial use through various forms of lease agreements.
Judge Ngwenya said six shopping malls had been built on Ingonyama land through the lease agreement. - The Mercury