Merchant Finance Pte Limited has unveiled two new teams dedicated to the Resource Owners and Women segment at the Ministry of iTaukei Resource Owners Forum yesterday, 31 July. The event brought together 100 Resource Owners from around Fiji and was an opportunity for Merchant Finance to showcase the newly established Vanua Finance team and the Marama Finance team.

At the launch, Chief Executive Officer of Merchant Finance, Veilawa Rereiwasaliwa said, “Indigenous landowners in Fiji have a considerable amount of resources however they have not been able to convert them into tangible assets due to the lack of financing options available to them. The creation of Vanua Finance as a dedicated team focusing on indigenous-based financing provide these Resource Owners the ability to convert their natural resources into tangible assets that will provide significant levels of income that they can use to build strong businesses that will generate multi-generational wealth. The projects we are focusing on are not designed to provide one-off payments which gets distributed once and nothing tangible comes out of it. We are focusing on projects that will generate recurring passive and active income for multiple generations.”

The new Vanua Finance team has four focus areas and they are; Land Subdivision, Tourism, Gravel Extraction and Commercial Property Development.

They have sixty-two projects in the pipeline worth $100m which they intend to execute in the next 3 years.

$5.1m has so far been approved for 5 projects and Merchant Finance is in the process of approving another 6 projects over the next 3 months with funding of $14m.

Mr Rereiwasaliwa also added that, “We are also setting up Marama Finance as a dedicated team focusing on gender-based financing. We see an opportunity for MSMEs that want to scale up and requiring funding up to $500,000“.

The new Marama Finance team have 4 focus areas and these are; existing businesses requiring up to $500,000 in funding, Agriculture and Fisheries value chain, commercial mechanised production and producers with global markets.

Merchant Finance’s vision is to be Fiji’s preferred financial services provider.

The company began their journey with motor vehicle financing and asset finance for heavy machinery and is now extending this to indigenous-based financing and gender-based financing and have plans to introduce more products this year with some exciting developments that it will announce soon.

Interested members of the public can visit their nearest Merchant Finance branch or send an email to [email protected] for more information on the newly established Vanua Finance team and Marama Finance team.