Post-pandemic recovery plan: Ongoing registration for N60billion Survival Fund Scheme is impressive — Osinbajo affirms.
ON SEPTEMBER 25, 2020
Kindly Share This Story
Updates: 1.7m to 2m MSMEs mapped out to benefit overall from Survival Fund & Payroll Support, Half a million to benefit from payroll Support alone, 330, 000 Artisans & Transport workers to get grants, 250,000 free Business names registration, Over 1.3m to enjoy Survival Fund, Over 300,000 MSMES to get another 15B in Guaranteed Off-take.
Regarding the fact as greater numbers of Nigerians keep registering their businesses for the ongoing launched Survival Fund scheme of the Federal Government, the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has affirmed progress recorded in the first three days of the exercise and has described the registration of applicants as massive and impressive, he went on to commend the commitment of the Buhari administration in ensuring effective and efficient implementation of all the schemes involved. The Vice President in his speech yesterday during a virtual interactive session by the Africa Report magazine, made a speech which focused on Nigeria’s post pandemic recovery plan which he also referred to as ‘Bouncing Back’.
In response to questions on the implementation of the various schemes under the ESP for small and medium businesses, the Vice President affirmed that the response by Nigerians to this recently launched scheme was massive, he went further to assure that the government shall remain committed to effective implementation of the exercise. He also confirmed the massive influx of potential beneficiaries trouping online to access the N100Bn survival fund whose registration just began.
More to that, the Vice President said , ” a couple of days ago, the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment launched the Survival Fund”. He explained further that the Fund include payroll support for about 500,000 beneficiaries and the plan is to take qualifying businesses who have minimum of 10 employees and pay salaries of those staff for three months. Payroll support is one important way that we intend to support small scale businesses. Artisans and transporters would also benefit from the grants to support their businesses and it will cover about 333,000 of such artisans and transporters.
Moreso , in his speech , he added that there is also free business name registration ongoing for 250,000 persons who wish to register their businesses. With much emphasis on the specific expected impact of the Schemes on MSMEs, the Vice President said ” we are looking for 1.3 million beneficiaries under the Survival Fund and under the artisans and transporters grants.
There is also a Guaranteed Off-take Scheme: ” Under this Scheme, basically if you manufacture certain items and food products, we will buy them from you he added”. Our average target for such food products is about 300,000 . Both Schemes will benefit about 1,7million individuals and small businesses. speaking further on the implementation, he affirmed that measures are being set in place check and ensure that beneficiaries receive positive impacts.
To further explain this, the Vice president called to mind that in as much as the government is trying to get everything going, that the financing is not the immediate problem, the important thing is the organizing of the beneficiaries and ensuring that this money gets to those for whom it is meant.
Responding to another set of questions about the agriculture component of the plan, the Vice President said the Agric programme is on course as two million farmers across the country have already been certified to benefit from the programme which aims to create jobs and guarantee food sufficiency. He added , “We are hoping that we can become a net exporter, at the moment we are the biggest producers of yam and cassava in the world”.
However, through this Mass Agriculture programme, we hope to become a net exporter of some of the products that we are focused on. he also said that the key factor of the Mass Agriculture Programme is that there is guarantee off-take for farmers.
He summarized all points by saying the overall target of government in the Economic Sustainability Plan is to save existing jobs and revamp businesses by improving the spending capability of Nigerians through the various initiatives in industry, agriculture, mass housing, and the solar connectivity projects.
