LNDC END OF YEAR MEDIA STATEMENT

20TH DECEMBER,2023 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
LNDC END OF YEAR MEDIA STATEMENT
LNDC wishes all its partners, stakeholders and the public at large a blessed Christmas season and New
Year ahead. You will remember that the Corporation marked the official launch of it’s 2023/24 – 2027/28
Strategic plan in August, 2023 whose main objective is to drive an operating model that is focused on
building industries for domestic private sector, with access to markets finance, infrastructure and FDI
partnerships. As the year draws to an end, the Corporation reflects on its journey and strides made to
date and wishes to apprise its stakeholders and the public at large on progress made. LNDC is proud to
report that in line with the strategy’s approach of increasing collaboration for shared successes, the
Corporation co-hosted a SADC DFRC CEOs forum with the Basotho Enterprise Development
Corporation (BEDCO) as a measure of enhancing collaboration and peer learning for unlocking access
to finance for industrialization.
The Corporation also supported the Prime Ministers initiative for empowerment of young innovators and
entrepreneurs in collaboration with UNDP, UNICEF, IOM, WFP and UNFPA, and pledged M1million to
provide project preparation support to projects that will emerge ready to be commercialized from the
programme. LNDC further participated in the Women in Tourism Summit hosted by the Lesotho Tourism
Development Corporation and pledged M1million to support women in business with project preparation.
LNDC with support of the ICR facility has embarked on an exercise to bring gender lens investing to
LNDC initiatives.
Furthermore, the Corporation undertook a nationwide roadshow to promote local and regional investment
and trade opportunities as well as Development Finance instruments that enable SMEs to take up
business opportunities in those local and regional value chains and supply chains. The corporation has
further entered into partnership with Itau Holdings to expand its milling business for both domestic and
export markets; an opportunity that presents a market opportunity for commercial production of grains in
Lesotho. The Corporation also approved financing valued at M15 million to Enrich Holdings as a means
of extending support to catalyze growth of businesses that are championing entry of local businesses into
impactful industries as well as those that are normally dominated by foreign investment.
Under strategic imperative of effective and efficient business processes and workflows, the Corporation
rolled out a digitized procurement process and migrated from a manual process which had inherent
inefficiencies and risks. The action is in line with the ultimate goal of LNDC to roll out an organization
wide process reengineering and reconstruction and digitalizing all systems by creating workflows and
cloud-based ERP and intelligence platforms. Speed of execution remains one of the key values of LNDC.
The year was not without challenges as the Corporation has missed some potential investments due to
lack of factory space as well as long community land consolidation processes where projects involve
incorporation of land owned by communities. Lack of policies and legal instruments were also an
impediment to attraction of investment is some sectors of potential diversification. The Corporation is
working tirelessly with the Government of Lesotho to bridge all gaps in the legal and regulatory framework
in order to increase the attractiveness of Lesotho’s investment climate.
With the objective of ensuring availability of infrastructure for industry support and business development
the Corporation recently launched reconstruction of Mantsebo Ring Road (2km) at Maputsoe Industrial
area and completed reconstruction of two factory shells which are a total of 10 000 sqm which were
damaged by storms during COVID 19 disruptions. To this effort LNDC is also on the verge of opening
Belo Industrial Estate (16 new factory shells in Butha Buthe) and Tikoe phase 3 (7 factory shells) in
Maseru. Advanced discussions with various multinational companies who are impressed by the
exceptionally high quality of construction at these new factory estates indicate that those factories once
open during the 2nd half of 2024 will be quickly occupied.
In the new year stakeholders will see LNDC intensifying efforts to charter new territories in terms of
industries and business models that it has not implemented before. This will require support and
contributions from stakeholders for co-creation of the economy we want. The LNDC through its leadership
at all levels seeks to fight the scourge of poverty and unemployment as a matter of urgency together with
you Basotho and “Friends of Lesotho’, hence our motto “Together We Build Sustainable Industry”.
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) remains critical to the success that we aim to achieve because of the
ability of FDI to transfer technology, expertise and financial flows while also opening of new markets. The
Corporation has a pipeline of fourteen (14) projects awaiting factory shells to start operation and (10)
other projects covering broad industries such as poultry, grains, fertilizer, aquaculture, horticulture, mobile
technology and renewable energy as partnerships between Domestic investment (DI) and FDI.
LNDC: Re Batalatsa Mabala a Khoebo e Hloekileng Bakeng Sa Bohle
LNDC: Levelling the playing field for sustainable trade for all