Business Plan - Business Plan Competition Opens At BSC

By -  Joaquin Sendolo

Business Plan

Competition aimed at soliciting plans from Liberian business entrepreneurs for scrutiny to pave a way for start-up loan has opened at the Business Start-up Center (BSC). 

Speaking in an interview with Daily Observer Business reporter recently at his Capitol Hill office, the Program Coordinator, B. Marcus Zarway disclosed that those to be accepted for the competition must be university graduates or graduating seniors who are less than 40 years of age.

The Business Start-up Center is a business institution formed by the University of Liberia in conjunction with Commerce Ministry with sponsorship from the Dutch based non-governmental organization SPARK.

It trains interested business entrepreneurs how to plan, start and run their businesses.

The center about a month and a half ago, completed training for ten business entrepreneurs, scrutinized them, and provided them US$10,000 each as a loan to start their businesses.

Giving some details about the selection process, Mr. Zarway said when interested entrepreneurs joining the competition submit their forms; a team of experts are selected to screen the candidates.

He said successful candidates are then sorted out and allowed to undergo training where they will be able to write business plan and defend it; after which when successful their names are submitted to partners for loan to start their businesses.

“Our own role in the giving of loan is we submit names of successful candidates who have met the criteria to partners for loan and not ourselves to provide it.  The loan is a soft loan, meaning that instead of giving duration of about six months to comply with payment, we give more time to the entrepreneurs to pay,” Zarway noted.

In terms of criteria qualifying an entrepreneurs for the loan, Mr. Zarway indicated that the academic status of the entrepreneur, the human resource capacity of his\her institution, the profitability of the business, and passion entrepreneur has for that business are taken into consideration.

In addition, he said “after the training entrepreneurs are asked how many people they can employ with his/her institution, and how far the business can go after three years from the day of starting.”

The BSC Program Manager and some Liberian business entrepreneurs just returned from a business forum in Rwanda.

He said the forum was called by BiD Network, an online partner that provides loan in the tone of US$10,000 to 1 million.

He said during the conference entrepreneurs from Liberia interacted with investors and there is a high hope for them to gain these investors’ favor to boost their businesses.

Category - Business Plan

Source - http://www.liberianobserver.com/index.php/business/item/1625-business-plan-competition-opens-at-bsc