Adewale Sanyaolu
The Bank of Industry (BoI), has denied news making the rounds that the Trader Moni was being used to buy votes from beneficiaries, insisting that many of the people who accessed the scheme are already repaying the loans.
The bank, equally explained that the recovered loans were being ploughed back into the system for further on-lending to willing beneficiaries.
TraderMoni was one of the products developed under the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP) targeting petty traders who do not meet the more stringent lending requirements of BVN, bank accounts, market associations and cooperatives required for bigger MarketMoni loans.
The bank disclosed that it has recorded 1.2million new entrants into the formal financial system as new operators of bank accounts or mobile wallets, under its Trader Moni scheme.
The bank said it has so far, disbursed loans totalling N12billion to the 1.2 million beneficiaries of the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme(GEEP).
Defending the TraderMoni scheme with regards to the proximity of the implementation to the election, Executive Director, Micro Enterprises, Bank of Industry (BoI), Mrs Toyin Adeniji, said GEEP was initiated in 2016 and first mobile loan was disbursed in 2017.
Commenting on loans repayment, she said the bank has set up a robust infrastructure to aid repayments and recovery of loans, adding that, “GEEP loans can be repaid by walking into commercial banks and making payments over the counter, paying at local agents of our aggregators or our mobile representatives and by purchasing of GEEP vouchers in your marketplace and recharging your loans account through recharge cards”.