THE promised successor to Linden Economic Advancement Programme (LEAP) has materialised as Linden Enterprise Network (LEN).

LEN Coordinator, Ms. Valarie Adams-Sharpe, told the Guyana Chronicle on Monday that the new entity will undertake most of the functions of its predecessor, with the exception of institutional strengthening, infrastructure development and training.

Herself a former manager of Linden Economic Advancement Fund (LEAF), she said LEN will also do the work of providing credit to entrepreneurs, potential entrepreneurs and facilitate business expansion and start-ups.

“We will be giving loans, for this first year, up to $5M. So, we have micro from $50,000 to $500,000 and the small category has been divided into two, in which we give between $500,000 and $2M and ranging from $2M to $5M,” she explained.

Adams-Sharpe said, in this first year, LEN will disburse medium loans, because all funding for that purpose would come, through the Government of Guyana, from what was left in the LEAF account as of the March 31, 2009 and repaid up to December 31, 2009.

According to her, those monies are expected to be transferred to the Government shortly and are, basically, from what clients of LEAF were repaying to CARICOM Insurance.

Adams-Sharpe said CARICOM Insurance will continue to collect all outstanding debts owed under LEAF, having already made a transfer of $50M to Government, with another $67M to follow.

She disclosed that LEN will also be managing the incubator at the Region 10 (Upper Demerara/Berbice) Business Centre on Republic Avenue, Mackenzie and the Industrial Incubator in Kara Kara and will maintain the Demonstration Farm at Moblissa.

Adams-Sharpe said: “We expect to do our first disbursement on March 1, which means we will start taking loan applications from about next Monday.
So we are inviting clients to start applying,” she said.