More than two million petty traders have been empowered through @Market Moni, Trader Moni and Farmer Moni under the Government Enterprises And Empowerment Programme GEEP.
MarketMoni, is a Federal Government micro-lending intervention that provides affordable loans of up to N100,000 for Micro, Small, and Medium businesses at no interest rate apart from a five percent (5%) one-time administrative fee.
FarmerMoni is designed to help petty traders expand their trade through the provision of collateral-free loans. Beneficiaries under the scheme can get access to a higher facility ranging from N300,000 to N2,000,000 when they repay within the stipulated time period.
The loan tenor is 6months. However, beneficiaries are encouraged to repay their loans in weekly instalments at their own convenience.
The Bank of Industry management software validates the loan application. The loan is paid within 48 hours to a mobile wallet account, that can then be cashed out.
To qualify for TraderMoni loan, agents visit market clusters and look for petty traders, artisans or micro-credit providers and enumerate them.
To be a candidate for Enumeration, the agent takes over 40 points of beneficiary data, including the candidate’s photograph with their wares and uploads it to a system that does a preliminary assessment on whether the candidate has registered before, has outstanding loans and other red flags.
f the initial checks are positive, the candidate’s information is then sent to GEEP’s Call Center, where the candidate is called for independent verification of some of the data captured by the field agent. If this is successful, the candidate is then whitelisted for disbursement.
According to the Bank of Industry, partners of the Fed Min of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management, and Social Development . a total of 2,418,936 traders and farmers have benefited from the scheme.
“We would like to state that the fully digitized loan records and biodata of all 2,418,936 GEEP beneficiaries are electronically stored in a central database. The data can be viewed at the GEEP Command Center of the Bank of Industry which is open to the public.”
The BOI stated that the programme relied heavily on technology to deliver its three loan products; namely TraderMoni, MarketMoni, and FarmerMoni.
“All National Social Investment Programme (NSIP) focal persons in all states of the federation, after necessary approvals, have been proactively furnished with all information regarding GEEP beneficiaries, as a matter of practice. This includes beneficiary names, phone numbers, and business location”.
GEEP agents nationwide are equipped with a proprietary mobile application which enables full registration and capture of up to 43 unique data points of every single applicant like biodata, contact information, information on the market, nature of trade, GPS coordinate of the trade point, picture of the beneficiary and beneficiary’s trade, association member and all other data that enables identification and credit assessment.
Data on every captured beneficiary is delivered to the Bank of Industry in real-time to enable verification, appraisals, and credit assessment. All submitted beneficiary data go through several points of verification to ensure the validity of the registration process. It is only when this data is verified that applicants are able to receive loans.
Consequently, every loan given out on the programme can be traced to a beneficiary involved in a known trade, at a known location, within a known market association, cooperative, or farming cluster. Due to data privacy restrictions, we are unable to publish personally identifiable customer information of the Bank of Industry.
GEEP beneficiaries are able to repay their loans through multiple channels. They can walk into any bank in the country and make repayments the same way they make uti|ity bi|| payments. any bank in the country and make repayments the same way they make utility bill payments. GEEP also developed repayment scratch-cards for beneficiaries much farther away from banks. Beneficiaries purchase the cards in their local communities and load them as they would a telco recharge card. When beneflciaries pay back the loan according to the repayment schedule, they automatically qualify for a higher loan. Since the inception of the program, several beneflciaries have successfully repaid their loans and gone on to access higher TraderMoni and MarketMoni loans.
Note:
Bank of Industry is a government owned bank chosen to be the implementer of the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme GEEP.
BOI specializes in lending to Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises who play a big role in the Nigerian economy and economies around the globe.
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