Microfinance and Small Loans Centre (MASLOC) on Thursday signed an agreement to outsource its loans recovery activity to UT Collections Limited (UTCL), a subsidiary of UT Holdings to enable the Centre retrieve its “delinquent loans.”

Currently, the Centre’s total amount of loans in debt stands at GH¢49.5 million.

Speaking at the signing ceremony in Accra, Ms Bertha Ansah-Djan, Chief Executive Officer of MASLOC, said UTCL is expected to retrieve GH¢10.45 million in the first phase of the loan recovery exercise and any new debt within the one-year agreement.

She said management had realized that the Centre needs greater impetus to upscale the loan recovery effort but conceded that MASLOC’s staffing and logistical resources were too over-stretched to achieve the needed results.

Ms Ansah-Djan said “we are outsourcing this activity in order that we would not be distracted from our current programmed activities as we seek to better manage our stretched resources even more efficiently.”

She described the credit history in the country, particularly for public supported funding schemes as not impressive enough adding, there was the need to seek collaboration of a private sector institution with an impressive track record in loan recovery to handle it.

Ms Ansah-Djan observed that more than GH¢300 million was needed to finance loan applications and the Centre’s obligation both for new and existing loans.

She said the Centre had made a shift in its portfolio management policy adding that, “Credit administration is a two-way affair with credit officers being in charge with both disbursement and recovery in their individual portfolio management. As a result, recovery rates have been far more impressive than before.”

Col (Rtd) Kaku Korsah, Board Chairman of MASLOC, said the Centre could not be sustainable in supporting the productive poor in society if it was beleaguered with huge debts.

Highlighting some bad debts that had hit the Centre, he said GH¢3 million was in arrears in the Ashanti Region whiles Greater Accra Region was GH¢1 million indebted to the Centre.

He expressed confidence in the ability of UTCL to assist in recovering the loan so that the Centre could continue to disburse loans to small-scale enterprises.

Major (Rtd) Stephen Antwi-Boateng, Managing Director of UTCL, said the company would be effective yet humane in their strategy to recover the loans.

MASLOC was established to provide, manage, regulate and approve funds for microfinance and small-scale credit schemes and programmes.

The Centre targets mainly the productive poor and vulnerable in the society including women, physically challenged and the youth, who are engaged in micro and small scale businesses to provide quick and easily accessible micro-credit facilities to reduce poverty and create employment and wealth.

MASLOC provides micro-credit or group loans, small loans, wholesale lending to microfinance institutions, Ministries, Departments, Agencies and rural banks for on-lending to the productive poor.

Economic activities funded by the Centre include food crops, agro-processing, poultry, micro-enterprise, vocations, handicrafts, fish farming and agricultural machinery.**