20millions Nigerian households have been supported on social investment programme – Edun
By Matthew Denis
The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr Wale Edun has disclosed that about 20 millions Nigerian households have been supported by the social investment Programme.
The Minister made the disclosure during a panel session on Fiscal and Fiance police at the Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG) in Abuja on Tuesday.
He said “first of all, the small holder farmers were given support. They were given fertilizer, they were given grains for food to people daily.
“And then secondly, as you know the social investment program is spearheaded by direct transfers to qualify to the 60% poorest in the population. And right now, 20 million households have been supported and are being supported directly. And it’s going to rise to, well, it’s 20 million people, 4 million households so far, and it’s going to rise to 15 million households who will be paid directly by the government.
According to him students are being helped, student loans, $239,000 are currently being, are in line, are being processed and about 20-30% of that have already been funded. They are being funded, it depends, of about $20,000 and a fee per month, and the fees are being paid.
” Likewise, consumer credit is being provided to the workers so that they can afford everything from maybe household goods or even conversion of their cars, kits to convert their cars to cheaper, cleaner, C-engine fuel.
“There are a whole plethora of social investment interventions on which the funds are being spent. If you allow me, I will go on more and say that, so for instance, if we say, the agricultural sector with individuals, when it comes to small scale businesses, grants are being provided to 1 million small micro enterprises.
The Minister stressed that grants of up to 1 million, loans of up to 1 million and 9% are being made available total of 75 billion Naira. And then, for the large scale companies, because we also, the effect of the foreign exchange adjustment, in particular, on the profit and loss, and so for them, there’s another 75 billion Naira is being disbursed in lots of 1 billion Naira each at 9% per annum to help them too with their coping with the cost of living, the cost of their production and operations.
” Increase from 7.6% to 10.5%. With more than 3 percentage point increase in one year, it’s unheard of. Frankly, we’ve been working on these issues across the world in many countries.
“when you do reforms and have 1 percentage point, you’re very happy because it takes time to really increase a little bit. On the expenditure side, the World Bank is supporting the rollout of social assistance. And I’ve seen firsthand how much effort is being deployed to really reach vulnerable households.
Mr Edun explained that Nigeria has built a social registry that includes 19 million households. That’s about more than 16 million people. And the target is to reach 10 million households in the near term.
” the rollout has been a bit difficult because of the requirement for biometric ID and BBM. That has made it very difficult. But the rollout, the registration of households to get those IDs and to meet those requirements is ongoing.
He reiterated that the World Bank is technically and financially supporting that. So that’s what I can tell about what we’re seeing in the data.
