The World Bank says the Federal Capital Territory Administration will receive the sum of N1.1billion out of $117million budgeted for the Covid-19 project by the World Bank Group and its development partners.
The fund is meant to help the FCT to recover from the impact of the COVID-19 on it economy.
World Bank Consultant and Coordinator of the Nigeria Covid-19 Action Recovery Economic Stimulus program, Professor Okunmadewa Oni, disclosed this at a stakeholders’ meeting in Abuja.
These were contained in a statement by the Head, Public Relations Unit, Economic Planning, Revenue Generation and Public-Private Partnership Secretariat, FCTA, Nnachi Okafor on Wednesday.
The World Bank programme coordinator announced that the FCT Administration was billed to receive the sum of N1.1billion out of the $117million budgeted for the Covid-19 project by the World Bank Group and its development partners.
Oni further disclosed that a total of N35.3billion had already been disbursed through “results-based Disbursement-Linked Indicators advances” to all the 36 states of the federation and the FCT, representing an average of N500million to N1.3billion per state, within the month of February, 2022.
He emphasised that the project was particularly aimed to assist the FCT to recover from the effects of Covid-19 especially those who were negatively impacted by the pandemic.
He said the DLI project would be implemented in three results-based areas, which include increased social transfers, provision of social services, and livelihood support to the poor and vulnerable households.
“Other areas of implementation include increased food security and safe functioning of the food supply chain as well as facilitating the recovery and enhancing the capacity of micro and small scale enterprises across the 36 states and the FCT,” the statement added.
He also noted that the World Bank had ratified the eligibility of the FCT to participate in the NG-CARES programme having met the necessary conditions.
The Chairman of FCT NG-CARES Implementation Committee and Mandate Secretary, FCTA Economic Planning, Revenue Generation and Public-Private Partnership Secretariat, Agboola Dabiri, expressed hope that the FCT and other participating states would leverage on the Mission to improve on the NG-CARES systems and processes for its full implementation as well as address some challenges associated with the Word Bank Assessment Report.
