BIG Pilot Project - Assessment Report - BIG Coalition Namibia

Section 3: A national Basic Income Grantment and economic growth. 31 There is a need to betterunderstand how more effective cash transfers for informalsector workers might promote access to sustainabledecent employment. 32An emerging evidence base is providing evidence of howcash transfer interventions support employment andentrepreneurial activities. Participants in Zambia’s cashpilot scheme use a significant proportion of the benefitsto hire labour, for example in order to cultivate the landaround their homes and consequently multiply thevalue of the social transfers while creating employmentfor local youth. 33 Mexico’s Progresa (now Oportunidades)social transfer programme is associated with localeconomy impacts that improve consumption, asset accumulationand employment broadly within communities—forboth programme participants and non-participants.34 Participants in Progresa invest a portion oftheir social transfers in productive assets and are morelikely to engage in entrepreneurial activities, improvingtheir potential for sustainable self-sufficiency. 357. Cash transfers stimulate demand for local goods andservices, promoting short-term growth outcomes. InZambia 80% of the social transfers are spent on locallypurchased goods, supporting enterprises in rural areas.In South Africa the redistribution of spending powerfrom upper to lower income groups shifts the compositionof national expenditure from imports to localgoods, increasing savings (by improving the trade balance)and supporting economic growth. 36 A social accountmatrix analysis of the Dowa Emergency CashTransfer (DECT) programme in Malawi found multiplierimpacts from the payments broadening benefits to theentire community. 37 In Namibia, the dependable spend-31 GTZ GPN (2007)32 Lund (2007)33 Schüring et al. (2006)34 Barrientos and Sabates-Wheeler (2006)35 Gertler et al. (2005)36 Samson et al. (2004)37 See Davies and Davis (2007), which estimates multipliers rangingfrom 2.02 to 2.4592