The Vice President, Prof. Yemi
Osinbajo, says the TraderMoni initiative under the Social Investment Programme
was to uplift and boost the businesses of petty traders across the country.
The initiative personally
conceived by President Muhammadu Buhari, is a micro-loan scheme under the
Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP), it provides capital for
artisans, and petty traders.
Osinbajo stated this after
inspection of Command Centre, where Tradermoni was being monitored and tracked
at Bank of Industry (BOI) in Abuja on Thursday.
“President Buhari was a chairman
of a group known as Katsina Foundation; the foundation was doing this exactly
by giving loan to small traders like people making Akara and other small
trades.
“The foundation gave loan to a
lot of traders and he felt this could be replicated on the national scale
because of how it worked.
“I can tell you that in terms of
originating the concept of this Tradermoni, it is from the president.
“He has done it before and he had
seen it working, he replicated it at the national level and I am happy we are
succeeding”
The programme also provides loans
for commercially active Nigerians typically unable to access loans by
traditional lending institutions as they have no formal identities, financial
track record or even collateral.
The vice president noted that BOI
was brought in, to give professional and commercial way of doing it.
He said that no fewer than 1.4
million people had so far benefitted from the programme across the country.
According to him, the programme
is the largest in Africa and no country that has anything close to it in the
world except India.
Osinbajo said that it was
unfortunate and ridiculous that people were criticising a programme of this
nature that had touched lives of a lot common man.
“It is a programme approved by
the senate and the entire National Assembly.
“I am wondering while an
individual is condemning such project. We are only going out to implement it
and we are doing so as vigorous as possible” Osinbajo stated.
He said that the government was
looking at N20 billion for the first phase of the programme but all depended on
the availability of funds.
2019 to be contiuned
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