The Social Investment Programmes (SIPs) of the Buhari Administration has been extended to artisans, with government disbursing 23,400 loans to beneficiaries in 13 states and the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja NAN reports.
The micro-credit scheme styled Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP), targets coverage for one million people, who are either artisans or market men and women, entrepreneurs or farmers.
They have already enrolled for the scheme and are expected to benefit this year, according to Laolu Akande, senior special assistant on media in the presidency.
The loan scheme is executed through the Bank of Industry, BOI, with the involvement of cooperatives.
Beneficiaries of the first phase are based in are Adamawa, Akwa Ibom, Delta, Ekiti, Kogi, Kwara, Niger, Lagos, Osun and Ogun. Others are in Oyo, Ondo, Rivers and the FCT.
The loan attracts no interest except the one-time 5% administrative fee for costs.
To facilitate the loan disbursement, four payment providers have been signed-on for the programme mostly in the urban areas. The next wave of payment providers, coming on stream by March 2017, would provide a much wider coverage in the rural areas.
Equally, about 8,436 market associations and cooperatives nationwide have been registered for this scheme through the web portal (www.boi.ng/market), as well as through paper application forms.
The loans range from N10,000, to N100,000 per applicant. While the loans would be paid directly to individuals, they are expected to belong to registered associations and/or cooperatives as the case may be, to ensure that they are peer-endorsed as credible, and to facilitate timely repayments. All beneficiaries must have BVNs and bank accounts.
NAN
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