Over 2300 South African-owned Spaza shops have been approved for government funding

Añadido: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]We joined by small enterprise development and finance agency acting CEO Ngosikona Mbatha. Ngosikona, good evening. Thank you so much for your time. Really do appreciate it. I want to start here.

[00:00:11]The agency had received more than 4,500 applications. That's nationally. Of those applications, 2,369 had been approved to the value of 180 million rand across those nine provinces. Of those 2,369 businesses that had been approved, how many of them have, as we speak now, received any financing and funding?

[00:00:36]>> Right.

[00:00:37]Good evening Baba and to yourself and to the viewers.

[00:00:41]You are correct.

[00:00:43]The the 2,369 approved applications are applications between us as SEFA and also NEF. So, if you remember very well, we contributed from our side to the fund through DSPDA about 150 million of the total of 500 million and the 350 million comes then from the NEF. So, from our side, if I were to account, we have then approved 1,316 spaza shops of the 2,369 with the balance of 1,053 being approved by NEF. So, from that 1,316 then we've been able to approve at this stage, we have been able to distribute stock because our funding, our component of the funding only relates to 40,000 rand worth of stock and NEF does stock and also they do infrastructure support.

[00:01:49]So, we solely deal with stock and then we deal with business support. So, we have then out of the 1,316 uh physically stock um to 728 um spaza shops in the country. The reason why um we still um uh uh going to distribute the balance uh of uh the stock is because we are waiting for licenses to come through or validation of licenses to come through from the various municipalities across the country. About 467 of these of these approved applications, they are awaiting validation of um the licenses and uh as soon as that comes through, we'll then again be on the ground and distributing um the remaining the remainder of the stock to um the uh spaza shops.

[00:02:37]>> Yeah. Uh just for clarity, the stock that you're providing, um who are the wholesale suppliers there to?

[00:02:44]>> So, we're using quite a a various uh group of wholesalers um depending who is closer. Uh we work um with partners and they're able then to source um the stock from um the various wholesalers. So, there's quite a a large number. You can, you know, um count um um the likes of Devland and and and so forth. But, solely to ourselves, we are working with three primary um um uh distributors that are helping us to distribute the stock in the country. One is A2 Pay, the second one is Ice Spaza, the third one is TradePort. And then they then engage uh different ones, yeah.

[00:03:25]>> Uh let's do some math here because I think that's very important to this conversation. Uh again, 2,369 uh spaza shops under your uh part of uh this process has been approved. You've You've uh executed uh stock funding or, you know, you've purchased stock for 1,316 uh of those uh 2,369 spaza shops. With the outstanding uh spaza shops uh yet to receive their stock pending uh permits uh being presented. Am I understanding you correctly on that?

[00:03:57]>> No, no, no. Let me just run it quickly.

[00:03:59]So, together with NEF, we've approved 2,000 times in 69. That is together with NEF.

[00:04:06]Out of >> Okay. So, you you do the stock component. What does the NEF do?

[00:04:10]>> They do also stock and the infrastructure part.

[00:04:14]>> Okay.

[00:04:15]>> Remember, yeah.

[00:04:16]>> So, how much have you been given of the 500 million in totality? How much is under management by your agency?

[00:04:23]>> It's under 10 50 million. That is under management by SEFA, 150 million. And so far, we have approved up to 79.6 million.

[00:04:33]>> Well, by my calculation then, it means that there's a strong outstanding of almost 100 million. Well, more so 90 million approximate rands that is still within the coffers of the agency that have not been approved for just yet. What will happen to that money?

[00:04:54]>> 70 70 million to be exact here. 70 million. So, we continuing. Remember, we are saying out of all the applications that we have that have the necessary documents and the necessary payments or temporary licenses, we've approved all of them in terms of what we have on the system. So, we encouraging associations, municipalities, you know, that let's come together. Let's assist spaza shops with more licenses. But associations, let's help the spaza shops to register. We're encouraging spaza shops that started applications on our system that have completed those applications to come through and complete those applications.

[00:05:29]And then we'll be doing that road show to make sure that we assist municipalities and spaza shops across the country to get more applications because it's our intention that the 70 million rand balance is completed and is utilized within this current financial year.

[00:05:43]>> Yeah. Gugu Ndlovu, I'm going to have to leave it there. Thank you so much for your time this evening. Really do appreciate.