World Bank pledges increased economic support for Nigeria
The World Bank is pledging increased financial support to Nigeria, lauding the economic reforms of the past eight months of President Bola Tinubu’s administration.
The bank’s Managing Director of Operations, Anna Bjerde, conveyed the bank’s commitment during a courtesy visit to the President at the Aso Rock Villa, Abuja, Thursday.
Addressing journalists after the visit, Bjerde described the Nigeria-World Bank partnership as “comprehensive and very fruitful,” expressing a commitment to further engage on critical aspects of the country’s development agenda.
She said, “The outcome is that the World Bank will continue to support the reforms of President Tinubu’s administration through the supportive instrument that we have and we will be stepping up our financial support to Nigeria in line with all the different initiatives that are being taken and all the needs that the economy has.”
The World Bank Chief also expressed confidence that the Bank would grow its current programmes with the Nigerian government.
“So while we already have a large programme, from this visit we already see that the programme will grow from there.
“I have been pleased with the discussions we had over the last meeting with the PBAT,” Bjerde added.
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On his part, Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, highlighted the outcomes of the two-day meeting of Western and Central Africa Ministers of Finance, co-hosted by Nigeria and the World Bank.
Mr Edun said issues of development and concessional financing for the West and Central Africa topped the agenda of the summit.
“We have a mini summit and issues of development and increasing the level of concessional financing to West and Central Africa were on the agenda and we reported to the President that we had a robust discussion,” he explained.
The minister revealed that Nigeria advocated an increased flow of resources towards the improvement of electricity and creating more access to social safety net.
Edun said the target will provide better support for Nigeria in digitisation and technological development of Nigeria’s economy.
“Emphasises were laid on increasing resources to Nigeria and to West and Central Africa and also to improve electricity access, growing the social safety net providing greater support for digitisation and technological development of our economies and to assist in our search for solutions to the issue of development and leading more people out of poverty,” he said.
