By Steven Godfrey Mkweteza

National economic empowerment fund limited(NEEF) says it is very impressed with the way faith leaders have been repaying loans that they accessed from the company.

Chief executive officer for NEEF Humphreys Mdyetseni disclosed this in Blantyre on Friday during a day long orientation meeting for the faith leaders in the southern region.

Mdyetseni said since the company started disbursing loans to the faith leaders three years ago, the repayment rate has been 77 percent.

“This is very commendable indeed as compared to that of national repayment rate of 74 percent, ” he said.

Mdyetseni added: ” this is despite calls that we should not disburse loans to the faith leaders for fear of increased default rate.”

According to the CEO, the company has for the past three years manager to disburse over MKone.two billion to the faith leaders in the country and target to disburse almost MK3 billion by December this year.

”We want to economically empower the faith leaders so that they desist from the dependency syndrome from their members, ” said Mdyetseni.

On the national average, Mdyetseni said over MK98 billion has been disbursed to the one hundred and sixty thousand Malawians for the past three years through loans.

He said the company has for the past three years disbursed over MK24 billion in the northern region, MK43 billion in the central region and over MK30 billion in the southern region.

“We are targeting to disburse another MK60 billion to the 40, 000 to 60,000 people in the 2024 to 2025 financial year,” he said.

In a separate interview, presidential advisor on religious affairs Brian Kamwendo said economically empowering faith leaders through loans was crucial since most of the faith leaders are the lowest paid.

“Due to that state of affairs, most faith leaders are not motivated in executing their work, become beggars while others abandon the work for something else somewhere,” he said.

Kamwendo however, advised the faith leaders to be paying back the loans so that others should be able also to benefit from the scheme.

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