The Vice-President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo on Monday said that the present administration had provided interest-free loans totalling N15.183 billion to over 300,000 beneficiaries since the implementation of the Social Investment Programme (SIP) commenced nationwide.
Osinbajo who gave this hint at the 9th Presidential Quarterly Business Forum held at the old Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, Abuja, said that each of the beneficiaries, comprising traders and artisans, received between N50,000 and N350,000 under the scheme.
He explained: “A total of N15.183bn in interest-free loans ranging from N50,000 to N350,000 has been disbursed to more than 300,000 market women, traders, artisans and farmers across all 36 states of the country and the FCT. By the way, 56 per cent of the loans have gone to women.
“We took the view that since the largest number of small businesses in Nigeria are the market women and men and petty traders, we needed to expand the opportunities in these categories”, the Vice President added.
Osinbajo, who expressed the belief that the present administration would make a great difference in socio-economically empowering beneficiaries if N1 trillion is spent on the poor yearly, said that the government’s focus had been to ensure that regulators understood their role as facilitators and not obstacles to business.
To realize this goal, he said that the government was also establishing one-stop shops where all regulators would be under the same roof in the states as well as working hard, through the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC), to improve the business environment.
Noting that the government has expanded the micro credit scheme to small businesses under the Government Empowerment and Enterprise Programme (GEEP), Osinbajo described the Trader Moni scheme, through which government has empowered two million petty traders, as one of the crucial components of expanding opportunity for Nigerian traders by giving them micro-credit at all levels of their operations.
He expatiated: “By giving them credit to replenish and increase their inventories, we give them a stronger chance to earn more, while they also service the value chain that they are a part of. But more importantly, we bring them into the formal sector, where they have access to government and private credit, and we lift more people permanently out of poverty.
“An important feature of the programme is financial inclusion. The GEEP has led to the opening of 349,000 new bank accounts/wallets for beneficiaries and intending beneficiaries.”
Describing small business owners with inventories between N5,000 and N10,000, as the largest segment of the working population, Osinbajo said that they constituted an important component of the value chain of most goods.
He said: “They sell the single sachets of soap, sugar and spices to the largest numbers of our people. But they are forgotten and ignored in economic plans and budgets, and considered too unwieldy and risky for micro credit loans.”
