By MAIMBOLWA MULIKELELA –
BARCLAYS Bank has this year raised more than US$2 billion to support different projects in Zambia.
Barclays Bank managing director Saviour Chibiya said the bank was able to raise funds for different projects in Zambia amounting to more than $2 billion.
Mr Chibiya said as a bank, they were able to arrange $828 million for Maamba Colliers Limited to enable them diversify and increase the power generation in this country.
“Our funding does not remain on the local savings because we do understand some of the requirements in Zambia such as the infrastructure development, including power, transport and social sectors.
“We have to get international savings and use our international network to raise funding which sometimes goes beyond our capacity of the local banking system and this year alone, we have been able to raise more than $2 billion for different projects in Zambia,” he said.
Mr Chibiya said this when he launched the Solwezi Barclays Bank branch last week.
“We have also managed to raise financing for companies in the agriculture and agro processing such as Zambia Sugar where we were arranging the $120 million for their expansion as well as the sovereign bond for the country which is meant for infrastructure development of $1.2 billion.
“These are some of the notable financing. Barclays has used its local and international expertise to raise funding so that Zambia can develop and support this economy,” Mr Chibiya said.
He said Barclays was the second largest lender in the Zambian economy as at June 2015.
“We were the second largest lender with loan and advances of K3.6 billion and those loans and advances are not only spread to large corporations but to also small and medium entrepreneurs (SMEs) and individuals,” he said.
Mr Chibiya said diversifying the portfolio and seizing funding the bank had provided to Zambia was very important in bridging the financing gap of the Zambian people.