TraderMoni Gulps N11.5bn As FG Sets Up Monitoring Centre

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, yesterday, spoke to traders via the TraderMoni call centre set up by the Bank of Industry (BOI) to track 3.56 million potential beneficiaries and 1.15 million traders that had received their loans.

Real-time information from the centre set up in Abuja showed that disbursements under the TraderMoni scheme have hit N11.5 billion as at December this year.

Further real-time information showed that 51.3 per cent of the beneficiaries are females while 48.7 per cent are males.

Foodstuff vendors constituted majority of the beneficiaries with 39 per cent, followed by clothing vendors at 20.6 per cent, FMCG vendors at 10.1 per cent and recharge card vendors 4.2 per cent.

The vice president, who inspected the centre, took calls from beneficiaries and prospective beneficiaries of the micro credit scheme on updates on their applications.

He described the scheme as the largest enterprise scheme for petty traders on the African continent. He said two million petty traders will be captured in the first phase of the scheme and more people will be captured in the second phase.

He likened the scheme to the Katsina Foundation run by President Muhammadu Buhari in which petty traders were given N2,000 to support their petty businesses.

The Managing Director of BOI, Olukayode Pitan, said the bank has confidence that the beneficiaries would repay the loans and even get higher loans.

Pitan said women entrepreneurs and petty traders have more tendencies to repay loans than even the big enterprise players.

However, he said those who default in repaying the loans will be blacklisted.