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.
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