Parliament’s small business development portfolio committee on Wednesday heard that just over a quarter of the R500 million Spaza Shop Support Fund had been approved eight months after its launch. She said the Small Enterprise Development and Finance Agency had approved 1 386 applications across all nine provinces, worth R83.9 million, with R57 million disbursed to 930 spaza shop owners so far. “I am not convinced that the department is doing enough on the outreach programme and the department is not doing enough on the funding of our local spaza shop owners,” she said. So far, only 1 026 spaza shop owners had been trained, against 1 386 approved applications. Officials did not explain the gap between the number of owners approved and those actually trained.