Govt plans PoS agents for $800 million cash transfer scheme

Finance, Budget and National Planning Minister Dr Zainab Ahmed has said that the federal government will deploy POS agents for money transfers during the National Social Safety Net Program Scale Up.

She said this while hosting the Executive Director, Angola, Nigeria, South Africa Constituency of the World Bank Group, Ms Ayanda Dlodlo, in Abuja last Friday.

According to the Treasury Secretary, the program will cost $800 million and start in 2023, immediately after the National Assembly approves it.

She said: “There is already a program for expanding the social safety net program. We call it the NASSP Scale Up. It’s been approved by the bank and the Federal Executive Council and provided for in the 2023 credit law. What we have now is to get approval from the National Assembly and it’s going to be active.

The finance minister added that the federal government is working on expanding the rapid response registry and working with the network of agents in the banking system and other financial services for the remittance program.

“We are working on having all the necessary databases available. For example, there is the rapid response register that has been set up and is being expanded. A pipeline of agents network has also been set up, working in the banking system and other financial services, so that after approval by the National Assembly, we can quickly start deploying the funds that would be disbursed by the bank. Ahmed added.

The minister noted that the agents will be deployed so that they can reach rural communities that are not under the bench.

The PUNCH confirmed on the World Bank website that the NASSP-SU was approved by the bank on December 16, 2021 and will run until June 30, 2024.

The $800 million program will be implemented by the federal Department of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development.

Figures from the Central Bank of Nigeria show that as of September 2022 there are 1.41 million agents in the country with 1.04 million active PoS terminals.

A CBN document states that nearly one in two adults do not use formal (regulated) financial services.

It also reveals that only 47.6 million Nigerians were on the bench, adding that about 38.1 million were financially excluded.

Data from the National Social Safety Net Coordinating Office shows that there were about 12.06 million poor and vulnerable households, including 49.81 million individuals in the database.

In January last year, the National Coordinator, National Coordination Office for Social Safety Nets, Mr. Apera Iorwa, said in an exclusive interview with The PUNCH that the Federal Government disbursed approximately $300 million through N5,000 to the poor and vulnerable in its national social register. cash transfers in four years.

He also revealed that two million households had benefited from an average of five people per household, amounting to about 10 million people.

The NASSCO was established in 2016 by the Federal Government, along with the World Bank, to strengthen Nigeria’s social safety nets and social protection system to help end extreme poverty and promote shared prosperity.

The World Bank offered a $500 million loan to support the social safety net program, which expires in June 2022.

However, Iorwa announced that an additional $800 million had been approved by the World Bank to extend the support program through 2024 in a way that would benefit 8.5 million Nigerians.

The Executive Director of the Angola, Nigeria, South Africa Constituency of the World Bank Group, Ms Ayanda Dlodlo, received by the Finance Minister, said much needs to be done to tackle food insecurity and poor power supply in the region . country.

She said: “There is still a lot of work to be done on things like food security, making sure there is access to electricity, and I think this is just a global African problem. Nearly 600 million people on the continent have no access to electricity, and electricity is always a catalyst for economic growth and development for any country.”