Bank of Industry (BoI) said at the weekend that it plans to disburse N20 billion tradermoni to two million Nigerians.
The said it has already disbursed a sum of N12billion to 1.2million beneficiaries with a target of disbursing N20billion to two million Nigerians
The Executive Director, Micro Enterprise, Mrs. Toyin Adeniji stated this while speaking to the media in Abuja, saying the tradermoni is among the four Social Intervention programme of the government which started in 2016.
She said, “The Government Enterprise and Empowerment Program popularly known as GEEP was developed for the over 37million Nigerians at the base of the pyramid who are in active commercial activity but have never had the opportunity to access loans.
“A program as big as this cannot be run with traditional tools or methods. We have a robust platform that drives the entire program. Every marketmoni, farmermoni and tradermoni beneficiary is a loan obligor to BOI. The bank has developed a structural framework to execute the program. We give loans to all qualified Nigerians regardless of faith, gender, status or political leanings, our loans are also what they are, loans.
“We have a full functional customer support centre where we have customer service representatives taking and responding to calls from the 774 local governments across the country, responding to people in their local dialects.
“At the start of the program we started with marketmoni, N50, 000, even while we were doing that, we were giving out N10, 000 and N20, 000. We had to make special provision, because the market association will tell us that some people don’t need N50, 000 and that they cannot endorse that.
“On reflection of that, when we realised that so many people are being left out, we had to go back to the drawing table. That was the evolution of tradermoni. Everywhere you go you see people selling akara, hawking boli, pure water, we now said it is important that we face a special category of people and have the technology to do it.”
On loan repayment by traders, she said it is not a national cake as most people say, or think. “If you do not repay the loan at the time you are supposed to, the bank will block your Bank Verification Number (BVN). Before that is done they must have reminded you severally. What we have put in place now is our infrastructure to collect the loans. Most people pay without the bank reminding them. Six out of every ten ask you first how to pay back,” she stated.
