The Business Opportunity and Information Centre (BoiC) has approved 149 projects of 500 applicants from the six Eastern Districts. The applications were approved after BOiC’s regional office in Trashigang opened yesterday.
Overwhelming applications promoted BOiC to expand its services to the eastern region.
BOiC’s Chief Executive Officer, Karma Tshering said the ratio between the number of employees and applications received is one is to 115. BOiC has 22 employees. “…because of the overwhelming number of applications received, the wait time is longer but the time taken to appraise is short.”
Among the six eastern districts, 72 projects approved were from Trashi Yangtse, the highest among the eastern districts. Samdrup Jongkhar district has the lowest approved projects with just four.
Speaking at the opening, the economic affairs Minister, Norbu Wangchuk said the centre was established to benefit the rural community by promoting growth of cottage and small manufacturing and non-formal rural activities.
“To help the rural people and to support the needy ones, we thought, we have to solve the problem of not getting loans. So this is the reason why we established the office here with less interest rate of 4 and there need not be any mortgages.”
Till date, the center received a total of 2001 projects from 20 districts, out of which 589 projects were approved.
Over all, Bumthang District has the highest number of projects approved with 140. Not even a single applicant has been approved from Gasa District.
More than a half of the approved projects are related to agriculture. The remaining are related to livestock and manufacturing.
