The Department of Micro Small and Medium Enterprise Development in Mufumbwe is training 600 Cooperatives across the district in business development skills meant to grow their businesses.

The training is being undertaken for a period of one month with a view to changing mindset among the members.

In an interview with ZANIS in Mufumbwe today, District Cooperative Inspector George Mukale said the training was necessitated because most cooperatives entirely depended on the government’s flagship Programme-Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP) as a conduit for accessing farming inputs only and not taking their cooperatives as businesses.

Mr Mukale said this has led to 90 percent of the cooperatives in the district not having business plans, a situation which has contributed to most of them not operating as intended.

“As a department, we are training cooperatives on the importance of a business plan. This is because we discovered that most cooperatives in the districts do not have business plans and that is why most of them depend only on acquiring fertilizer,” he said.

Mr Mukale said the department has started with using the community radio for these trainings before convening in-person meetings to be held before the 15th of May, 2024.

The Mufumbwe District Cooperative Inspector explained that the training will help cooperatives establish their businesses and a benchmark in the district as well as entice would-be funders of their businesses.

He has since called on all the members in the district to broaden their streams of income to cope with challenging times especially the droughts and other natural calamities that may befall them.