Community Development Minister Emerine Kabanshi recently announced that the Government plans to extend the cash transfer scheme to cater for up one million households. Government has sensed that it is onto an election winner.
GRZ is currently running two cash protection schemes that gives support to the vulnerable in the community : social cash transfer and social protection fund. The cash transfer is a bi-monthly cash allowance of $25 and $50 dollars for vulnerable households and households where there are people with disabilities respectively.
The social protection fund is a once-off grant of up to $670 dollars for viable business proposals. This gives cash grants targeting vulnerable families to either boost and/or venture into viable businesses. Not only are the grants helping encourage people to consider new businesses, it is also leads families to widen the sort of business they engage in.
Cash transfers have become the darling of the development world in tackling poverty. They are favoured over transfers in kind (e.g. food subsidies) because cash transfers have the advantage of permitting beneficiaries to use the money flexibly on their own priority needs unlike in-kind transfers that prescribe to the beneficiaries what to consume. Cash transfers also inject cash into local markets and the community, whereas handouts may even distort prices and disadvantage local markets. Not to mention they are cheap to run.
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