Nigeria has reached final steps agreements on the release of $1.3 billion from the World Bank Group and other development partners for the take off of its Development Bank, finance minister, Kemi Adeosun said on Sunday.
The DBN is Nigeria’s first ever wholesale development financial institution which will serve as a conduit for intervention for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and help push government efforts to achieve inclusive growth.
Adeosun was speaking at a press briefing to announce the outcomes of the just concluded Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington DC.
“We have been able to crowd in money to the tune of $1.3 billion, from the World Bank, African Development Bank and the European Investment Bank.
“We have made a lot of progress now and ready to take off. We have advertised for the management position and when appointed, that would be able to compliment the work and build synergy with CBN intervention. We need to get the money into the hands of smaller business that make 50 per cent of our GDP,” she stated
Adeosun also said agreement was also reached to expedite action for the take off of Nigeria’s $500 million North East social safety net project.
But she said at the meeting with the multilateral agencies, concerns were raised around the unacceptably low levels of disbursements of World Bank funds on Nigerian projects. Disbursements are presently at 13 percent and according to the minister, there equally some agreements on how to reverse the trend.
“We agreed on a number of measures to reverse this, and these include, we would review process of originating projects, project designs and implementation issues to understand why certain projects are performing at such a low rate.
“We would consider restructuring, reallocating or even canceling irredeemable project components. We would strengthen our implementation capacity including our capacity for monitoring and evaluation,” she told journalists.
“We would have regular monthly meetings now with the World Bank Group and there would be regular briefings of Federal Executive Council and the National Economic Council on the performance of Nigeria’s portfolios. And that’s because some of these projects are at state governments’ level.
Adeosun said it would be very important to bring to the attention of the governors those failing World Bank projects in their states so that they can actually access this concessional funds aligned to our development goals.
The minister said at the meetings, government received a validation of the economic strategy to transform Nigeria from consumption driven to and investment driven model, noting that whilst in the short term, there has been some pain and some dislocation, the long term economic outlook for the country remains confident.
She said a key objective of their attending the meetings was to see how Nigeria could better take advantage of its relationships with the multilateral agencies.
She said for instance based on global commitment to reverse the trend of illicit financial flows out of Nigeria, government has reached some high level agreement on a number of initiatives which will hopefully bring significant repatriation of money into the Nigerian economy, particularly those that has flown out as a result of tax evasion.
She said the detail will be disclosed after briefing the president on specifics and upon final and formal approval.
The minister also indicated that they met with the rating agencies – Moody, Fitch and S&P and interacted on the recent rating actions on Nigeria and discussed government’s economic revival plans.
The Nigerian delegates also had high level discussion on the financial challenges in the power sector, which the minister said necessitated agreement for a workshop in Abuja in November.
The event, Adeosun indicated will be attended by the World Bank Group, IFC, MIGA which provided partial risk guarantees the ministry of power, the ministry of finance, the CBN, NNPC for the gas perspective, the GENCOs, DISCOs all the stakeholders in the power sector where the World Bank will bring their specialist power finance team to see how to proffer financial solutions to the challenges of the sector.
Further briefing on the outcomes of the meeting, Adeosun said the Nigerian authorities also met with the Japan international cooperation agency (JICA)
and secured their commitment to facilitate trade and investment in the country.
“specifically they have agreed to make investments in agriculture, fisheries sector and we have made progress on the Jebba hydro projects which is also a power project,” she informed.
“Our constituency which represents South Africa, Nigeria and Angola had a meeting here and we reviewed the fact that the allocation to our constituency are among the poorest particularly from the IFC. What we have agreed to do is that we will be hosting a meeting in Abuja in March for the three finance ministers and the idea is that we will benchmark and scale up our technical capacity to ensure that we are able to get more of what is available for the three countries,” she disclosed.
She also said Nigeria secured commitments from the Canadian ministry of finance to support in the PPP platform for roads.
She said the delegation also presented the family home fund to a number of prospective investors and development partners including the world bank, IFC, MIGA and the Islamic Development Bank and already received indicative interest which will be tied up later.
“We plan and have agreed technical support in the area of domestic revenue mobilization and we’re going to make more use of the IMF’s online training in financial management, we will be incentivizing our staff who are interested in taking these courses to do so.”
“Finally we had a meeting with the IFC which is the private sector investing window of the world bank group, even though they have significant investment in Nigeria, it is limited to a number of sectors they significantly want to scale up and we have agreed with them on two things.
“One is that we will host a road show to showcase Nigeria indigenous companies that could be eligible for IFC inward investment.
“We have agreed with them also that we should try to develop a pipeline of products rather than waiting for IFC to and look for companies.
She said the ministry of finance would take a proactive role in showcasing some of the eligible companies for IFC which is believed will crowd in more private sector investments as well as the jobs and growth.
The DBN is Nigeria’s first ever wholesale development financial institution which will serve as a conduit for intervention for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and help push government efforts to achieve inclusive growth.
Adeosun was speaking at a press briefing to announce the outcomes of the just concluded Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington DC.
“We have been able to crowd in money to the tune of $1.3 billion, from the World Bank, African Development Bank and the European Investment Bank.
“We have made a lot of progress now and ready to take off. We have advertised for the management position and when appointed, that would be able to compliment the work and build synergy with CBN intervention. We need to get the money into the hands of smaller business that make 50 per cent of our GDP,” she stated
Adeosun also said agreement was also reached to expedite action for the take off of Nigeria’s $500 million North East social safety net project.
But she said at the meeting with the multilateral agencies, concerns were raised around the unacceptably low levels of disbursements of World Bank funds on Nigerian projects. Disbursements are presently at 13 percent and according to the minister, there equally some agreements on how to reverse the trend.
“We agreed on a number of measures to reverse this, and these include, we would review process of originating projects, project designs and implementation issues to understand why certain projects are performing at such a low rate.
“We would consider restructuring, reallocating or even canceling irredeemable project components. We would strengthen our implementation capacity including our capacity for monitoring and evaluation,” she told journalists.
“We would have regular monthly meetings now with the World Bank Group and there would be regular briefings of Federal Executive Council and the National Economic Council on the performance of Nigeria’s portfolios. And that’s because some of these projects are at state governments’ level.
Adeosun said it would be very important to bring to the attention of the governors those failing World Bank projects in their states so that they can actually access this concessional funds aligned to our development goals.
The minister said at the meetings, government received a validation of the economic strategy to transform Nigeria from consumption driven to and investment driven model, noting that whilst in the short term, there has been some pain and some dislocation, the long term economic outlook for the country remains confident.
She said a key objective of their attending the meetings was to see how Nigeria could better take advantage of its relationships with the multilateral agencies.
She said for instance based on global commitment to reverse the trend of illicit financial flows out of Nigeria, government has reached some high level agreement on a number of initiatives which will hopefully bring significant repatriation of money into the Nigerian economy, particularly those that has flown out as a result of tax evasion.
She said the detail will be disclosed after briefing the president on specifics and upon final and formal approval.
The minister also indicated that they met with the rating agencies – Moody, Fitch and S&P and interacted on the recent rating actions on Nigeria and discussed government’s economic revival plans.
The Nigerian delegates also had high level discussion on the financial challenges in the power sector, which the minister said necessitated agreement for a workshop in Abuja in November.
The event, Adeosun indicated will be attended by the World Bank Group, IFC, MIGA which provided partial risk guarantees the ministry of power, the ministry of finance, the CBN, NNPC for the gas perspective, the GENCOs, DISCOs all the stakeholders in the power sector where the World Bank will bring their specialist power finance team to see how to proffer financial solutions to the challenges of the sector.
Further briefing on the outcomes of the meeting, Adeosun said the Nigerian authorities also met with the Japan international cooperation agency (JICA)
and secured their commitment to facilitate trade and investment in the country.
“specifically they have agreed to make investments in agriculture, fisheries sector and we have made progress on the Jebba hydro projects which is also a power project,” she informed.
“Our constituency which represents South Africa, Nigeria and Angola had a meeting here and we reviewed the fact that the allocation to our constituency are among the poorest particularly from the IFC. What we have agreed to do is that we will be hosting a meeting in Abuja in March for the three finance ministers and the idea is that we will benchmark and scale up our technical capacity to ensure that we are able to get more of what is available for the three countries,” she disclosed.
She also said Nigeria secured commitments from the Canadian ministry of finance to support in the PPP platform for roads.
She said the delegation also presented the family home fund to a number of prospective investors and development partners including the world bank, IFC, MIGA and the Islamic Development Bank and already received indicative interest which will be tied up later.
“We plan and have agreed technical support in the area of domestic revenue mobilization and we’re going to make more use of the IMF’s online training in financial management, we will be incentivizing our staff who are interested in taking these courses to do so.”
“Finally we had a meeting with the IFC which is the private sector investing window of the world bank group, even though they have significant investment in Nigeria, it is limited to a number of sectors they significantly want to scale up and we have agreed with them on two things.
“One is that we will host a road show to showcase Nigeria indigenous companies that could be eligible for IFC inward investment.
“We have agreed with them also that we should try to develop a pipeline of products rather than waiting for IFC to and look for companies.
She said the ministry of finance would take a proactive role in showcasing some of the eligible companies for IFC which is believed will crowd in more private sector investments as well as the jobs and growth.