IN BRIEF : ‘Business Plan Competition’ fetches 1,000 applicants

After three weeks of rigorous sensitization for this year’s ‘Business Plan Competition’ (BPC), over 1,000 applications have been received and their fate now lies in the hands of the panel of judges that will soon be selected. The panel will be tasked to select 150 applicants that will later be seized down to 100 applicants after presenting complete business plans to Bank Populaire.

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

After three weeks of rigorous sensitization for this year’s ‘Business Plan Competition’ (BPC), over 1,000 applications have been received and their fate now lies in the hands of the panel of judges that will soon be selected.

The panel will be tasked to select 150 applicants that will later be seized down to 100 applicants after presenting complete business plans to Bank Populaire.

It is the100 beneficiaries that will receive the loan of Rwf10 million and a grant of Rwf1 million.

"We are coming up with a technical team to evaluate the applications,” revealed Norman Musengimana, Program Manager of Business Development Services Centre (BDS) in Kigali.

He disclosed that after the selection there will be two weeks of business plan writing.

"After the team finishes the selection, there will be training on business plan writing and it will be left to Bank Populaire to choose the best 100 out of the 150,” he said.

This year’s BPC was more selective on Technical and Vocation Education and Training. And unlike last year they chose to double the number of beneficiaries. BPC was started in 2004 to encourage self employment.

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