Kapula in Bredasdorp is one of the current Growth Fund recipients.
In the past three months, we have created 120 new jobs alone as part of the Growth Fund, and we have reached 357 jobs in total so far from 37 contracted SMEs since launching the Fund in mid-2018. Through our subsidiary CDI Capital, which is our vehicle catalysing funding for SMEs, we are now on track to increase this total to 420 jobs and 43 contracted SMEs by the end of April 2019.
The Growth Fund is a grant fund specifically for growing South African small businesses who need a cash injection to scale up further and create jobs. The Growth Fund is managed by CDI Capital, which was incorporated as a CDI subsidiary in 2016 to catalyse funding for SMEs. The funding has been enabled through contributions by the National Treasury’s Jobs Fund, the Technology Innovation Agency (TIA), and the Western Cape Department of Economic Development and Tourism (DEDAT).
The Growth Fund is open to South African-owned businesses who operate within South Africa, who are at least one year old with turnover or assets above R1m.
Each applicant must demonstrate their year on year growth and/or the potential for sufficient growth and must be tax compliant. Applicants also need to match 20% of the grant contribution of the Fund through a cash contribution to achieve agreed objectives. Importantly, the business must be able to create new jobs.
According to Ryan Rode, project coordinator for CDI Capital, the CDI is ahead of its key deliverable, namely, the creation of permanent jobs through participating SMEs.
“We are on track with our contracting; and some of the businesses contracted have done very well indeed to create the jobs sooner than contracted. This is very impressive given the difficult economic climate,” he said.
He added that CDI Capital is also in discussions with more partners in the funding eco-system to strengthen the project substantially and provide more support to the SMEs.
CDI will open a new recruitment window in the coming weeks for the Growth Fund, to meet its target of 600 jobs; with grant funding for only 180 jobs left up for disbursement to SMEs.