A total of 319,755 Nigerians has so far benefited from the Economic Sustainability Plan’s Survival Fund Payroll Support launched by the Federal Government.
This is contained in a statement titled ‘ESP survival fund: More payroll support payments, MSME grants to commence this week’ which was issued by the Senior Special Assistant to the Vice President on Media and Publicity, Laolu Akande.
The ESP survival funds was created last year by the Economic Sustainability Committee chaired by Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo to respond to challenges posed by the Covid-19 outbreak.
According to Akande: “This (this week’s payment) is expected to increase the number of beneficiaries under the Payroll Support track, which has so far benefitted a total of 319,755 Nigerians, while 265,425 Nigerians are beneficiaries under the Artisan and Transport Support track.
“Of the 265,425 beneficiaries, there are 118,581 beneficiaries under Artisan support track, and 146,844 beneficiaries under the Transport track.
“The payroll support track aims to support 500,000 beneficiaries with payment of up to N50,000 per employee for a period of three months.
“The MSME Survival Fund, a component under the Nigerian Economic Sustainability Plan, is designed to support vulnerable Micro Small and Medium Enterprises in meeting their payroll obligations and safeguard jobs in the MSMEs sector.”
Akande also said businesses has not been left out provisions has been made for business operators who has been incurring losses due to the impact of the pandemic.
He said: “In the same vein, under the Artisan Support scheme, a total of 333,000 Artisans and Transport business operators nationwide will get a one-time operations grant of N30,000 per beneficiary to reduce the effects of income loss due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Also, 172,129 businesses have so far benefitted under the under the ESP Survival Fund formalization support track, which is aimed at registering 250,000 new businesses for free with the Corporate Affairs Commission.
“The formalisation support scheme had commenced on October 26, 2020, with the registration by aggregators – CAC registration agents across the 36 states and the FCT” he concluded.
