Source document: https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/1698141198432.pdf (South Africa)
NATIONAL ASSEMBLY QUESTION FOR WRITTEN REPLY DUE IN PARLIAMENT: FRIDAY, 6 MAY 2022 1347.
Mr B N Herron (Good) to ask the Minister of Small Business Development: In view of a recent economic analysis of the World Bank for the Republic that if we were to match the self-employment rates of our peer countries, we could potentially halve our unemployment rate, and noting that in the Republic self-employment represents only 10% of all jobs, compared to 30% in most upper middle-income countries such as Turkey, Mexico and Brazil and therefore, the greatest barrier to self-employment is access to start-up finance, how does she intend to (a) grow self-employment, entrepreneurship and small business start-ups and (b) increase access to start-up finance?
NW1609E REPLY: I HAVE BEEN ADVISED BY THE DEPARTMENT AS FOLLOWS (a) The DSBD acknowledges that entrepreneurship and self-employment offer the greatest opportunity to create jobs, particularly paying special attention to increasing the number of start- ups and stimulating innovative businesses which could be an engine of job creation and growth in the future.
The DSBD further recognises that to generate employment, South Africa would have to address low levels of self-employment, the entrepreneurship ecosystem and access to financing.
To this end, we have started looking at a process of designing the National Entrepreneurship Strategy which will ensure implementation of processes aimed at relaxing constraints to entrepreneurship and self-employment further considering factors that will enable start-ups to grow, have access to markets and the creation of new products.

(b) The DSBD has embarked on a process of formulating the Funding Policy which will ensure the development of finance solutions for start-up businesses.
The policy will ensure the availability of financial resources such as equity, blended financing model (grants and loans), subsidies and guarantee schemes.

The youth owned enterprises will also benefit out of the provisions of the policy and programmes that will emerge thereof.
There are also other programmes outside DSBD response to NA WPQ1347 NW1609E 1 the DSBD such as those provided by the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) specifically for youth owned enterprises and the DSBD is collaborating with these to provide scale in this specific support.

To date, the DSBD has designed a progamme to facilitate access to finance for youth start-ups (Youth Challenge Fund) in order to stimulate innovative businesses and contribute towards job creation.
For the current financial year (2022/23), the Small Business Development Portfolio, which is made up of the DSBD and its entities – Small Business Development Agency (Seda) and Small Business Finance Agency (sefa) – aim to provide financial and/or non-financial support to 10 000 start-ups youth businesses.

STELLA NDABENI-ABRAHAMS MINISTER: SMALL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT DSBD response to NA WPQ1347 NW1609E 2