The Federal Government of Nigeria mapped out N1.9 billion to help 5 million traders all over Nigeria.
The Federal Government on Tuesday said it would scale up the number of those that would benefit from the TraderMoni programme from 2.5 million to five million annually.
The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Hajiya Sadiya Farouq, said this when she visited the Command Centre of the programme located at the Bank of Industry Building in Abuja.
The TraderMoni Programme being implemented by the Bank of Industry allows each beneficiary to get an interest free loan of between N10,000 to N15,000.
The interest-free loan is part of the social intervention programmes under President Muhammadu Buhari led administration.
Statistics from the Command Centre on Tuesday showed that N19.6bn had been disbursed to about 1.95 million Nigerians under the programme.
A total of 4.6 million people have been enumerated out of which 2.57 million have been verified.
Farouq described the implementation of the programme as a huge success adding that through it, the government would be able to achieve its objective of reducing the level of poverty in the country.
She said, “We are proud of the BoI for putting up this centre and I must commend you for that. I must also use this opportunity to reiterate the President’s vision of lifting 100 million people out of poverty.
“This is one of such programmes geared towards making sure that millions of Nigerians are lifted out of poverty.”
Farouq added, “So far we have been able to capture about 2.5 million people since the programme started and our ambition now is to scale it up to five million people annually.”
The minister said the government had the required facilities and capacity to achieve this new target.
