World Bank loan – The Commerce Africa https://thecommerceafrica.com African Reneissance Fri, 30 Jun 2023 21:45:28 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.9 Women Empowerment in Nigeria: World Bank Approves another $500m loan for FG https://thecommerceafrica.com/women-empowerment-in-nigeria-world-bank-approves-another-500m-loan-for-fg/ https://thecommerceafrica.com/women-empowerment-in-nigeria-world-bank-approves-another-500m-loan-for-fg/#respond Tue, 27 Jun 2023 11:31:03 +0000 https://thecommerceafrica.com/?p=14373 The World Bank Group has approved a loan of $500m to help Nigeria drive women’s empowerment.

This became the second loan approved by the World Bank under the new President, Bola Tinubu.

It is a scale-up financing for Nigeria for Women Programme, which was initially approved on June 27, 2018, with $100m financing.

A statement by the World Bank read in part, “The World Bank has approved $500m for Nigeria for Women Program Scale Up (NFWP-SU). The scale-up financing will further support the government of Nigeria to invest in improving the livelihoods of women in Nigeria.

“The NFWP-SU will help to ensure better economic opportunities for women, which is essential for addressing gender inequality; guaranteeing better education, health, and nutrition outcomes for families; and building women’s and communities’ resilience to climate change.”

The World Bank stressed the need for the government to address issues that inhibit women’s economic empowerment and hinder inclusive, low-carbon, and resilient economic growth.

It noted that women’s empowerment is essential to their ability to build resilience to climate change and, by extension, the resilience of their households and communities.

The World Bank Country Director for Nigeria, Shubham Chaudhuri, was quoted as saying, “We have seen promising outcomes from the parent NFWP which has helped to create economic opportunities for thousands of rural women through the Women Affinity Groups. NFWP’s model is helping to improve livelihood opportunities for women and enhancing their capacity to adapt to climate change and to participate in local administrations for policymaking related to community empowerment.

“Closing the gender gap in key economic sectors could yield gains of between $9.3bn and $22.9bn, we are optimistic that this scale-up will help Nigeria to move closer to bridging this gap.”

Also, the Task Team Leader for Nigeria for Women Project, Michael Ilesanmi, said, “The Program aims to mobilize poor and vulnerable women into different institutions and, using these institutional platforms, link them to markets as well as financial and non-financial services. Through participation in Women Affinity Groups, project beneficiaries build social capital that can then be leveraged to access financial, political, and economic capital–thus leading to both social and economic empowerment.”

It was disclosed that NFWP has been implemented in six states and provides support to over 427,887 Women Affinity Groups’ members through the formation and strengthening of 20,506 of these groups.

In about two years, these WAGs have saved about NGN 4bn ($8.9m equivalent), with a significant percentage of these funds in circulation as loans at any given time. So far, 835,573 community members have benefitted from the NFWP through different interventions.

Source:The Punch

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Nigerian Govt Negotiating $750mn World Bank Loan https://thecommerceafrica.com/nigerian-govt-negotiating-750mn-world-bank-loan/ https://thecommerceafrica.com/nigerian-govt-negotiating-750mn-world-bank-loan/#respond Sat, 14 Nov 2020 07:31:19 +0000 http://thecommerceafrica.com/?p=2670 The federal government is in the process of accessing a World Bank loan of $750 million on behalf of the states.

The new loan is meant to stimulate the local economy and support the vulnerable households’ consumption.

This, it said, is part of the windows of opportunity to mitigate the effect of COVID-19.

The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, disclosed this on Friday at the inauguration ceremony of the Federal Steering Committees of the Nigeria COVID-19 Action Recovery and Economic Stimulus (N- CARES) in Abuja.

According to a statement by the ministry’s spokesperson, the minister, in her address said the government had created several windows of interventions as captured in the Economic Sustainability Plan (ESP) inaugurated by President Muhammad Buhari on March 30, 2020.

She said the ESP is to, among other things, respond robustly and appropriately to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, identify fiscal measures to enhance oil and non-oil government revenues and reduce non-essential spending.

Speaking on the need for proper implementation, Mrs Ahmed said: “To ensure that implementation of the N-CARES is in line with the federal government priorities as outlined in the ESP, the Federal Steering Committee, made up of ministers and permanent secretaries as well as a Technical Committee, made up of directors of key ministries, department and agencies (MDAs) has to be in place. The government has carefully selected you as members of the Federal Steering and Technical Committees because of the important role your MDAs play in the recovery of the Nigerian economy as well as the fulfillment of lifting 100 million people out of poverty.” she said

Mrs Ahmed, while speaking on the reason for the inauguration of the committee, said the inauguration of the committee is expedient given the nature of the emergency intervention.

“Nigeria as the biggest economy in Africa cannot afford to remain in recession; the survival of over 200 million population is germane to all we do and we must address the concerns of the majority of our populace.

“Let me remind you that the consequences will be too high if we ignore the root cause of rising civil unrest in our country. We must, therefore, fashion out ways of ensuring that post-COVID-19 is not injurious to the Nigerian people and the economy.”

“Ladies and Gentlemen, as members of the Federal Steering Committee, while your major role will be to provide an overall policy direction for the implementation of this programme and advise Mr. President appropriately, the Federal Technical Committee will be responsible for the programme oversight, overall guidance, support, coordination, strategic direction, review and approval of the annual work programme as well as budget for the Federal CARES Support Unit (FCSU),” she said.

Mrs Ahmed also read out the terms of reference (ToR), saying, “for your guidance in your assignments, your committee shall: Provide overall strategic and policy guidance for the implementation of the programme; reviewing operation performance annually and provide feedback to government at both federal and state levels; and garnering support for the operation as further specified in the operations manual.”

The new loan is coming among several concerns raised by critics that the debt profile of the country is too high and could take a heavy toll on its finances during repayment.

However, the Debt Management Office, the federal agency saddled with the responsibility of managing the country’s debt – local and foreign – has consistently said that the debt to the country’s GDP is sustainable.

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