Customers who took out loans from a Microfinance Scheme at the Tonga Development Bank held a Holiday Market Festival on December 4-5 to sell their locally made products and produce in Ma'ufanga.

The festival is the first of its kind, is aimed to provide an opportunity for customers who have taken up loans to start small business ventures like handicraft making and growers to market their products at the newly-filled area on Vuna Road. The area was filled by government to be used as temporary market for street vendors.

The micro finance scheme is a project funded by the Asian Development Bank under Japan’s Fund for Poverty Reduction Grant Assistance Project (JFPR) in partnership with the Ministry of Finance and Planning. The Tonga Development Bank is the implementing agency.

As part of the JFPR grant project, ADB has allocated US$280,000 of which US$80,000 is reserved for training and business support and US$200,000 is for lending and administered as a self-revolving scheme.

Japan’s Ambassador to Tonga HE Dr Kazuchika Hamuro said the Holiday Market is an incentive to alleviate poverty in Tonga and to empower the vulnerable in Tonga by providing micro finance opportunities that will support income-generating activities.

"The project also aims at bringing about behavioral changes that would assist commercial planning among the people of Tonga especially those who are vulnerable. It also harnesses the potential of women by easing their accessibility to micro finances that they might be able to clearly demonstrate their economic potentials therefore addressing gender inequality in Tonga."

Lending began in November 2013 in the outer islands of Vava’u, Ha’apai, ‘Eua and to rural villages in Tongatapu.