$750m World Bank loan for COVID-19 recovery in Nigeria -Minister

The Minister of State, Finance, Budget and National Planning, Prince Clem Agba, says the 750 million dollars World Bank loan is an intervention towards helping Nigerians quickly recover from the effect of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

Agba stated this at the appraisal meeting of the proposed Nigeria Cares (N-CARES) programme organised by the Community and Social Development Project (CSDP), an initiative of the Federal Government, on Tuesday in Abuja.

The minister explained that the Federal Government had created windows of interventions as captured in the Economic Sustainability Plan.

He urged states to leverage on the N560 billion and N462 billion available for MSMEs and Agriculture sectors to mitigate the effect of COVID-19 on their people.

Agba urged representatives of the 36 States and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) at the meeting to pass the information to the relevant MDAs and groups for the benefit of their states.

“It is on the recommendation of the Economic Sustainability Plan that we are here today. The World Bank Loan of 750 million dollars is to support interventions geared towards helping Nigerians recover quickly from the effect of COVID-19.

“This loan is in line with the Federal Government Plan of action for recovery. As we must have heard, the loan of 20 million dollars per state and 15 million dollars for FCT is based on performance for result.

“It is therefore expected that at the end of the two years of this emergency intervention, our people in the state will not ask us questions on how we spend the loan because we shall have visible results to show.”

The National Coordinator of CSDP, Dr Abdulkarim Obaje, said that the programme was aimed at mitigating the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on citizens, infrastructure and the economy.

Obaje said that the programme was designed to cover all the 36 States and FCT, assuring that CSDP was technically prepared to provide all that was needed to drive the programme.

He said that the Federal Government has shown high commitment towards lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty over the next 10 years.