Enra payments were made at the ECC Gym on March 27 in Majuro
BY GIFF JOHNSON
Marshall Islands Correspondent
MAJURO, Marshall Islands — The third quarterly distribution of universal basic income to every citizen in the Marshall Islands happened May 28, as tens of thousands received a US $200 payment.
Eenra payments were made at the ECC Gym on March 27 in Majuro. Photo by Giff Johnson
The bigger news is that this week’s payment was 25% more than the March distribution due to President Hilda C. Heine’s advocacy to increase money going out to citizens during a time of skyrocketing fuel, food and transportation costs.
This is an $8.2 million injection of funding into more than 40,000 people’s hands around the Marshall Islands. Previous quarterly payments saw a boom in consumer spending, with crowds of people in every retail store and in local restaurants spending their quarterly allotment of universal basic income.
The nation’s universal basic income program is known locally as “Enra” — the Marshallese word for a small food basket woven from coconut fronts. For the third and fourth quarter payments, the World Bank is supplementing funding from the Compact of Free Association to return the quarterly payment to the level of the first payment in November 2025.
The Enra program, managed by the Marshall Islands Social Security Administration, is receiving $6.6 million each quarter this fiscal year from the Compact’s trust fund. This amount is now being supplemented by the World Bank, which is injecting $1.6 million per quarter for the remainder of this fiscal year. This is increasing the individual payments from about $160 to $200, returning the level to the amount of the initial Enra payment last November.
When the program launched late last year, 33,119 citizens living in the Marshall Islands registered and received their payments. By the second payment in March, the number skyrocketed to 40,610, which reduced the per capita payment to $160.
PaulThe increase for the next two quarterly payments “was pushed by the president to provide necessary relief to help people absorb the higher costs,” said Finance Minister David Paul. World Bank grant funding is proving $3.2 million to supplement the last two quarterly payments of fiscal 2026.
The budget for fiscal 2027, which starts Oct. 1, is proposing a $6 million increase in funds for the Enra program, to boost the annual level to $32.5 million for fiscal 2027, Paul said.
This level of appropriation will maintain the quarterly payments at about the $200 per person level, he said.
For the third payment on May 28, the Marshall Islands Social Security Administration analyzed immigration travel data to ensure only Marshallese citizens who live in the country receive the Enra payment.
This resulted in 400-plus people who received earlier payments being removed from the eligibility list for that payment.
MISSA and the government’s Immigration Division are working together to check the Enra registration list against Immigration in- and out-bound travel data of Marshallese. The government engaged a software specialist to develop software to compare those on the eligibility list with travel information.
The criteria MISSA is using is that if a citizen registered for Enra left the country and did not return for more than 90 days without medical or other mitigating circumstances, then they are not eligible to receive Enra quarterly payments.
Students studying overseas, Marshall Islands diplomats and medically referred patients and escorts are exempt from the 90-day rule.
This new verification process was expected to result in about 410 people removed from the eligibility list for the third quarter payment.
Still, the numbers are way up from the first payment in November 2025, but new registrations plateaued after the second payment was issued in late March. Registrations leaped from 33,119 in November to 40,610 in late March.
Registration for the third quarter payment went up by a small number, to 41,355 before MISSA halted registration temporarily to process the third quarter payment. But now, using Immigration data to enforce the residency requirement, 410 people were reportedly taken off the list last week. This would reduce the total receiving Enra this quarter to just below 41,000 — or a net increase of only about 340 between March and May.mbj
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