The Bank of Industry (BoI) on Thursday disclosed that over 350,000 micro enterprises nationwide had benefitted from the Federal Government’s Enterprise and Empowerment Programme MarketMoni scheme.
The Bank’s Executive Director, Toyin Adeniji, gave this hint Thursday at the Kano State’s edition of Micro Small and Medium-Scale Enterprises Clinic.
Adeniji said: “GEEP MarketMoni has given people who otherwise have no access to finance, money to finance their businesses. These micro enterprises are expanding their businesses, making more profit and employing more people.
“Most of our beneficiaries are women, some of whom are widows and single mothers. We are improving the quality of their lives, their children’s lives, their health and even education. We are seeing very quantifiable impacts. No government has ever done this.”
The Special Assistant to the Vice President on MSME, Tola Johnson, pointed out that the microcredit scheme was the best thing that had happened to micro businesses in the country.
According to him, one of the benefits of the scheme is that it dealt with the collateral challenge because all that the micro entrepreneurs need is their data, a bank account and Bank Verification Number.
He noted that out of the 37 million small businesses in Nigeria, 36.9 million are microenterprises, adding that this informed the government’s attention to this critical sub-sector of the economy.
“Micro enterprises are responsible for almost 50 per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product and 80 per cent of the workforce”, Johnson said
During her chat with journalists at the event, the Head of Agent Networks, Sherifat Abdullahi, who interacts directly with agents, association heads and the beneficiaries, said that apart from the 350,000 direct beneficiaries across the country, the scheme had created employment opportunities for over 5,000 Nigerians who act as MarketMoni agents, some of whom are graduates, previously unemployed.
She explained further: “As someone who has direct contact with the beneficiaries, this has been a very emotional journey for me, watching how this interest-free loan scheme is changing the lives of people, especially women and the vulnerable. We truly appreciate the Federal Government for doing this.”
Official statistics indicate that are at least 37 million MSMEs in the country, 85 percent of which lacked access to funding.
To frontally tackle the problem and improve MSMEs’ contribution to the GDP, the present administration created the scheme as a social intervention programme aimed at reinvigorating the economy at the base of the economic pyramid – micro enterprises
According to government’s guidelines on disbursement of funds under the scheme, to benefit applicants just need to apply through their registered Market Associations and Cooperatives, have a Bank Verification Number and a mobile phone.
The loans range from N10,000 to N100,000 and are expected to be repaid within six months without interest.
GEEP MarketMoni is a Federal Government Social Intervention Programme that provides interest-free loans of N10,000 to N100,000 to microenterprises, the segments of society with the greatest difficulty accessing credit.
The scheme, which is executed by BoI is targeted directly at traders, market women, artisans and farmers nationwide.
To assess the impact of the scheme in Kano State, the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, met with a section of about 12,000 beneficiaries from Kano State during the state’s edition of MSME Clinic.
In addition to the GEEP MarketMoni, there are three other Social Investment Programmes being implemented by the President Buhari-led administration, namely the School Feeding Programme, Conditional Cash Transfer to less privileged and N-Power.
