The Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo on Wednesday said the Federal Government has so far disbursed more than N15 billion to over 1.5 million petty traders under the TraderMoni loan initiative nationwide, stressing that the move was an important part of the administration's economic policy.
Speaking on the Policy, Osinbajo said the interest-free loans are aimed empowering ordinary Nigerians and helping to tackle poverty, while enabling those at the bottom of the economic ladder who work the hardest do better.
“TraderMoni is a very important aspect of our economic policy. We believe that one of the ways to counter poverty and to enable those who work the hardest, and these are the petty traders, to empower them to enable them to be able to do better, we have to give them credit.
“Nobody else will give microcredit to the petty traders because nobody is sure whether they will be able to pay or not. Only the government can do such. That is why we have decided that we must give micro credit to the petty traders.”
On whether the microcredit scheme was duly approved by the National Assembly, he said
“First of all, this a programme which was duly approved by the National Assembly. We started this programme (GEEP) since 2016 and it has two other schemes – Market Moni and Trader Moni. “We’ve implemented it across the 36 states of the federation. I think there is never a wrong time to do the right thing. We started this programme almost 18 months ago. We had to wait until NASS approved money before we went on with the programme.”
