ESP Survival Fund: MSME Grants to commence this week as 172,129 businesses registered free by CAC

In furtherance of the Buhari administration’s support for small businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic under its Economic Sustainability Plan (ESP), payment would be made to the next batch of beneficiaries of the ESP Survival Fund’s Payroll support track and the one-off General MSME Grant of N50,000 as from this week.

Also, 172,129 businesses have so far benefitted under the ESP Survival Fund formalization support track, which is aimed at registering 250,000 new businesses for free with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).

This 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, NESP, is designed to support vulnerable Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in meeting their payroll obligations and safeguard jobs in the MSMEs sector.

The scheme is estimated to save not less than 1.3 million jobs across the country and specifically impact on over 35,000 individuals per state.

Applications for the MSME Grants and the Guaranteed Off-take Stimulus Scheme opened on February, 9th, 2021 and closed on March 1, 2021.

The General MSME Grant is a one-off grant of N50,000 that will be given to each qualified MSME as direct cash injection into their enterprise. The total number of beneficiaries in this track is 100,000 spread across the States.

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.

A statement by Vice President’s Media Aide, Laolu Akande, at the weekend made available to the Blueprint, stated that the formalization support scheme had commenced on the 26th of October, 2020, with the registration by aggregators – CAC registration agents across the 36 states and the FCT.

The processing of applications for the Guaranteed Offtake Stimulus Scheme is still ongoing and the commencement of this track will be announced on a later date.

The Guaranteed Off-take Stimulus Scheme is aimed at protecting and sustaining the incomes of vulnerable Micro and Small Enterprises by guaranteeing the offtake of their products.  A total of 100,000 Micro and Small Enterprises are to benefit from the scheme.

The Economic Sustainability Plan (ESP) was approved by President Muhammadu Buhari on June 24, 2020, as a N2.3 trillion stimulus plan to mitigate the socio-economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Plan was developed by the Economic Sustainability Committee chaired by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, SAN.