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Tag: world bank

  • Fed Govt, Seven Energy sign $112m World Bank’s gas deal

    Fed Govt, Seven Energy sign $112m World Bank’s gas deal

    The Federal Government and Seven Energy International Limited, an integrated gas company, have signed a $112 million Partial Risk Guarantee (PRG) for the supply of natural gas.

    The gas will be delivered by its wholly owned subsidiary, Accugas to the 560 megawatts (Mw) Calabar power plant in Cross River State built under the National Integrated Power Project (NIPP).

    PRG is a financial instrument that will secure the supply of up to 130 million cubic feet per day (mmcf/d) of natural gas to NIPP Calabar, thereby enabling consistent generation of an additional 560Mw of electricity to the national grid, approximately 20 per cent of current national power generation.

    This arrangement, which guarantees payments to Accugas for gas supply, is backed by the Federal Government and the World Bank. It will be the first of its kind, signalling  government’s commitment to increase power supply in the country and stabilise the ‘gas to power’ value chain.

    Speaking on the development, in Abuja, yesterday, Vice President, Prof Yemi Osinbajo said: “I must say that this is a very significant event for us and as we all know this is the first PRG for gas that we are signing.  We know that it will encourage investment in gas infrastructure and we are certainly looking forward to the multipliers that will come from it.”

    Osinbajo commended Seven Energy for completing the 69 km, Uquo to Creek Town pipeline which would provide continuous flow of natural gas from the Uquo field in Akwa Ibom State to NIPP Calabar in Cross River State and add up to 560Mw to the national grid.

    The construction of the pipeline involved completion of the longest river crossing horizontal directional drilling (HDD) project in Africa. The project was done by local contractors.

    Prof Osinbajo said: “Given the current power situation, we expect that this gas that will go into the Calabar plant will provide another 500Mw of power, which is very significant given our current situation.”

    Also speaking, the Chief Executive Officer, Seven Energy, Phillip Ihenacho said: “The signing of the agreement is very significant because it is the first gas-to-power guarantee that the World Bank has provided for encouraging investment in the gas sector in Nigeria. It assisted in securing and leveraging the $700 million investment already committed into gas infrastructure in Nigeria.

  • Nigeria too big to fail, Adeosun tells World leaders

    Nigeria too big to fail, Adeosun tells World leaders

    The Federal Government has vowed to do everything required to bring Nigeria back to the path of growth with a resolve to the world that Nigeria is too big to fail.

    Speaking on sidelines of the plenary session of the 2016 International Monetary Funds (IMF)/World Bank meeting in Washington DC on Friday, the Finance Minister Mrs. Kemi Adeosun categorically stated that “Nigeria is too big to fail and too significant in the region to underperform.”

    Reacting to the speeches of the World Bank President Dr. Jim Yong Kim and the IMF managing director Ms. Christine Largard, Adeosun stated that “what we are trying to do is to rewrite Nigeria’s economic story so that we can grow, and to grow we need critical infrastructure like power, transport, housing. These are where we are redirecting expenditure from our recurrent where we thought there have been a lot of waste and leakages.”

    The finance minister who was very vibrant and visible at the meeting said the federal government is “redirecting spending to capital to create long-term value, it’s tough in the short term but the long term benefits will be there for the future generation. “We are confident of getting back to growth” she assured the international community.

    With regards to calls by Lagarde and Kim for massive investment in infrastructure, Adeosun stated that, “if we invest in critical infrastructure there will be increased productivity, which will lead to job creation and prosperity for our people and it is very comforting to hear this coming from the highest levels that that is the way to go.”

    Adeosun stated that Nigeria has aligned with the views of the multilateral institutions with regards to inclusive growth, stating that inclusive growth is one of the objectives of this administration to end poverty.

    She noted that Government is “investing heavily in education and as part of our social intervention programme we aim to engage more young graduates into primary schools because, education, I am sure we will be soon start seeing improvements in our education indices.”

    She also stated that government was pumping money into agriculture and women are many in agriculture, they are the key especially in agriculture so we are pumping money into agriculture with small business loans with 60% on agriculture. BoI has assured that it will start disbursing micro loans to women so there is a great focus on women, out of the cooks for the school meal programme are women. Money coming in from part-time jobs makes a huge impact on family living.”

    On his part, the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Mr. Godwin Emefiele said the three-pronged comprehensive approach of monetary, fiscal and structural reforms “is the way everybody has to go and we are doing that in Nigeria, there is serious collaboration between the monetary and fiscal authorities and if we continue in this direction we will achieve these objectives.”

    Commenting on whether the financial sector reforms has been enjoying a buy-in from potential investors, Emefiele said the CBN has “done a lot of reforms like the flexible exchange rate regimes which is picking up gradually, when you have the kind of situation that we have, naturally people will be a bit skeptical but with time as they develop more confidence we will begin to see more and more of them coming into the country.”

    The CBN governor acknowledged that “there are positive indications that meeting and networking with foreign delegations and officials of the IMF and World Bank at this meeting we will achieve some of the objectives that we have in mind. We will work together with China to see that we get our fair share of the benefit of being the earliest country to adopt renminbi as an international currency.”
  • Power: Adeosun accuses World Bank, IMF of denying Nigeria coal use

    Power: Adeosun accuses World Bank, IMF of denying Nigeria coal use

    The Federal Government yesterday accused developed countries and multilateral development institutions of frustrating its efforts at addressing the electricity supply deficit facing the country through the use of coal.

    Speaking during a panel discussion at the on-going International Monetary Fund (IMF)/ World Bank meeting in Washington DC, Finance Minister, Mrs Kemi Adeosun described the multilateral institutions and their western backers as hypocrites for denying Nigeria and other African countries opportunity to use coal to generate electricity.

    She said: “I am going to point fingers at multilateral institutions and the West (of double standard). A good example is the coal fired power plants. In Nigeria, we have coal but we have power problem, yet we’ve been blocked because it is not green, there is hypocrisy because we have the entire western industrialisation built on coal energy; that is the competitive advantage that they have been using. Now Africa wants to use coal and suddenly they are saying oh! You have to use solar and wind (renewable energy) which are the most expensive, after polluting the environment for hundreds of years. Now that Africa wants to use coal they deny us.”

    While she agreed that Africa needed to make investment in infrastructure,  she said there must be a level playing field for all. “We need policy consistency to attract bankable projects, we also need macro-economic stability, but if you want to phase out coal,  no problem but those who started it should lead, those who want us to stop using dirty fuel should stop it first before telling us not to use it. By telling us not to use coal, they are pushing us into the destructive cycle of underdevelopment, while you have competitive advantage, you tie our hands behind us,” she said.

  • Coal for electricity: Adeosun blasts World Bank, IMF

    Coal for electricity: Adeosun blasts World Bank, IMF

    The federal government on Wednesday lashed out at Western countries and multilateral development institutions for hampering her efforts to provide stable electricity supply to Nigerians.
    Speaking at a panel discussion at the on-going International Monetary Fund (IMF)/ World Bank meeting in Washington DC finance minister Mrs. Kemi Adeosun called the multilateral institutions and their western backers hypocrites for denying Nigeria and other African countries to use coal to generate electricity.
    According to Adeosun “am going to point fingers at multilateral institutions and the west, a good example is the coal-fired power plant, we in Nigeria have coal but we have power problem, yet we’ve been blocked because it is not green, there is some hypocrisy because we have the entire western industrialization built on coal energy, that is the competitive advantage that they have been using, now Africa wants to use coal and suddenly they are saying oh! You have to use solar and the wind (renewable energy) which are the most expensive, after polluting the environment for hundreds of years and now that Africa wants to use coal they deny us.”
    She agreed that Africa needs to make investment in infrastructure but the playing field must be leveled “we need policy consistency to attract bankable projects, we also need macroeconomic stability, but if you want to phase out coal,  no problem but those who started it should lead, those who want us to stop using dirty fuel should stop it first before telling us not to use it. By telling us not to use coal they are pushing us into the destructive cycle of underdevelopment, while you have the competitive advantages, you tie our hands behind us” she said.
    Adeosun went ahead to state categorically that she “would sign up to a global proposal that is fair, with a morally viable sequence that demands that the rich countries have to close their coal fields first before other countries have to do anything.”
    Professor Paul Collier of the University of Oxford who agreed with the finance minister called that “an ethical commitment from an African minister.”
    Nigeria’s finance minister lamented that huge infrastructure gap all over the world and stated that even if the federal government spends all its annual budget for five years on infrastructure, it cannot close Nigeria’s infrastructure gap. The global infrastructure deficit stands at $1.5 trillion.
    At the end of the panel discussion, Adeosun disclosed to Nigerian journalists that efforts of the federal government to repatriate stolen monies from foreign countries was yielding positive results with the US and Switzerland offering to return stolen loots.
    However, to ensure that the repatriated loots are put to good use, the government’s of the countries with these stolen monies she said are demanding that the federal government identify what specific projects specific amounts of money would be devoted to before they release the monies.
    Similarly, a report on fiscal monitoring disclosed that two-thirds of the global debt of the nonfinancial sector—comprising the general government, households, and nonfinancial firms—is currently at an all-time high amounting to about $100 trillion.
    This the report said “consists of liabilities of the private sector which, as documented in an extensive literature, can carry great risks when they reach excessive levels. However, there is considerable heterogeneity, as not all countries are in the same phase of the debt cycle, nor do they face the same risks.”
    However, the report warned that “there are concerns that the sheer size of debt could set the stage for an unprecedented private deleveraging process that could thwart the fragile economic recovery and resolved that “this private debt overhang problem is, however, not easy in the current global environment of low nominal output growth.”
    At another forum, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank Group, has launched a new program that aims to raise $5 billion from global institutional investors to modernize infrastructure in emerging markets over the next five years.
    This fund will open up a new stream of capital flows to improve power, water, transportation, and telecommunications systems in developing countries.
    The initiative called MCPP Infrastructure, builds on the success of IFC’s Managed Co-Lending Portfolio Program, a loan-syndications initiative that enables third-party investors to participate passively in IFC’s senior loan portfolio. In its first phase, the program allocated $3 billion from the People’s Bank of China across 70 deals in less than two years. It demonstrated how large investors can benefit from delegating the processes of deal origination and approvals to IFC.
    The first partnership under the program was signed with the global insurance company Allianz. Under the agreement, Allianz intends to invest $500 million, which will be channeled into IFC debt financing for infrastructure projects in emerging markets. IFC is also in advanced discussions with Eastspring Investments, the Asian asset management business of Prudential, for a commitment of $500 million. Similar discussions are being conducted with AXA, also for a commitment of $500 million.
    MCPP Infrastructure is designed for institutional investors seeking to increase their exposure to emerging markets infrastructure. IFC will originate, approve, and manage the portfolio of loans that will mirror IFC’s own portfolio in infrastructure. It will do so in a manner agreed upfront with its partner investors, always subject to the overall governance of the platform.
  • Poverty rate on decline, says World Bank

    Poverty rate on decline, says World Bank

    • 100m out of extreme poverty

    Global extreme poverty has continued to fall rapidly, the World bank  has said.

    According to the inaugural edition of its Poverty and Shared Prosperity—a new series that will report on the latest and most accurate estimates and trends in global poverty and shared prosperity annually—nearly 800 million people lived on less than $ 1.90 a day in 2013. That is around 100 million fewer extremely poor people than in 2012.

    According to the study on poverty and shared prosperity: “Around 100 million people moved out of extreme poverty from 2012 to 2013, and since 1990, nearly 1.1 billion people have escaped extreme poverty.  The global poor are predominantly rural, young, poorly educated, are mostly employed in the agricultural sector, and live in larger households with more children.”

    In 2013, the bank said in a statement that 767 million people, or 10.7 per cent of the population, were estimated to be living below the international poverty line of $1.90 per person per day.

    The study said that extreme poverty worldwide continues to fall despite the lethargic state of the global economy. But it warned that given projected growth trends, reducing high inequality may be a necessary component to reaching the world’s goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030.

    The bank said extreme poverty remains unacceptably high, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa.

    It  said: “The region now has the largest number of extreme poor in the world, 389 million, which accounts for half of the total number of extreme poor in the world, and more than all the other regions combined. The decline in extreme poverty was largely fueled by the rapid advances in East Asia and the Pacific and South Asia.

    Half of the world’s extreme poor now live in Sub-Saharan Africa, and another third live in South Asia.

  • No plan to sell any asset now, says FG

    No plan to sell any asset now, says FG

    The federal government Tuesday said it has not taken any decision to sell any national asset.

    Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma appealed to those opposed to the planned sale of some national assets to exercise patience with the government “as the government is yet to decide on assets sale in its stimulus package.”

    Udoma made the disclosure in Abuja at the 57th Annual Conference of the  Nigerian Economic Society (NES) where he stated that the idea of selling national assets “is just a proposal within the stimulus package of the federal government to scale up revenue but is yet to be finalised or even agreed on.”

    The budget and national planning minister said government will consult widely and hear views on the cost and benefit of the planned sale before any such decision will be made.

    He said the administration has several packages and plans that will ensure that Nigeria comes out of the current recession soon and stronger. One of such packages he noted is the stimulus plan to borrow from the World Bank, African Development Bank (AfDB) and the China Exim Bank.

    Udoma said that the stimulus package was being worked upon and was yet to be finalised, adding that to achieve this speedily “we are working to fast track procedures through presidential directives and legislation and I want to emphasis that notwithstanding the current economic challenges we face, we are not discouraged at all and this is a crisis we must not waste.”

    The minister lamented that Nigeria’s foreign reserves had shrunk from $26.51 billion from the second quarter of 2016 to $24.74 billion in September.

    Udoma said that government was working on a programme with the private sector to launch made in Nigeria campaign. He said the intent of the programme was to encourage more production and consumption of made in Nigeria goods and services.

    According him, “we believe that with more patronage Nigerian producers will be encouraged to improve the quality of their products. We should encourage the branding of Nigerian products by self-regulatory industry bodies such as wine makers have in France. Made in Nigeria should become a badge of quality.

    The minister added that “as the quality of our goods and service improve, both local and international demand for them will increase and high local demand would give Nigerian producers the platform to explore the export market.

    He said one of the fastest routes to grow the economy and create jobs for teeming population was by pursuing export-led growth. The Minister said that this strategy holds high promise for adding to our foreign reserves and further stabilising the Naira.

    He urged Nigerians to “see this crisis as an opportunity for us as a country to make those major structural changes needed to change this economy for good. We should use this crisis to implement the reforms needed to unlock the economic potentials of the non-oil and high employment sectors.”

     

  • World Bank official urges Fed Govt to create environment conducive for housing investment

    World Bank official urges Fed Govt to create environment conducive for housing investment

    Lead Financial Sector Specialist, Finance and Markets, World Bank Group Simon Walley yesterday said Nigeria needed to boost housing development by facilitating an environment conducive for investors.

    Wally made the observation at the 32nd Annual Conference and General Meeting of the African Union for Housing Financing (AUHF) in partnership with Nigerian Mortgage Refinance Company (NMRC) in Abuja.

    The three-day conference, with the theme: “Housing and Africa’s Growth Agenda’’, is organised by Fesadeb Communications Ltd., convener of Annual Abuja Housing Show, and producer of Housing programmes on television.

    Wally  said  Nigeria had the capital to finance affordable housing and did not need capital from other countries to finance housing.

    “You do not need capital from outside Nigeria, looking at the level of investment required; Nigerian has got more than enough capital within the country.

    “Investors want to put their money into investment and housing is perfect; in that sense, long term investment is what investors are looking for.

    “The country needs the right mechanism, tools and methods for turning that domestic naira investments into housing, and that needs to be done on a large scale,’’ Wally said.

    He said the critical problem facing Africa is the rate at which the population is growing.

    Wally also said the underlying population growth rate and organisation rate combined would present real challenges for Africa in the next 10 to 20 years.

    “The country is looking at housing needs in excess of over 150 to 200 housing units per year just to keep up with the demand.

    “The problem is that the number of housing needed has not been produced at the moment for Nigeria and other countries, and the result of that is informal housing or slums’’, he said.

    Prof. Charles Inangete, NMRC’s chief executive officer explained that housing is paramount to the national economy, adding that Nigeria had an outdated housing data.

    “We are still talking of 17 million housing deficit, a data which was created four years ago; we need more current data to make housing policy more relevant,” he said.

    Mr Thierno-Habib Hann, senior Housing Finance Regional Lead, International Finance Corporation (IFC),  in a presentation , said housing finance could be expanded by making mortgage markets affordable.

    According to him, financing for energy efficiency housing and potential by scaling up small loans for home improvement and self construction can boost housing investment.

    He listed  other factors that can boost housing investment as appropriate support and targeted subsidy policies,  the refocusing  of government interventions and restructuring of failing housing banks.

  • Four World Bank officials drown in Ekiti

    Four World Bank officials drown in Ekiti

    Disaster struck in Ekiti State Wednesday evening when four members of a World Bank assessment team on assignment drowned at Egbe Dam located in Egbe Ekiti in Gbonyin Local Government.

    Among the four who died in the incident was a son of a contractor to the World Bank whose father was one of the survivors. They were said to have commenced work at the site on Tuesday before tragedy struck on Wednesday.

    The incident which three other members of the team survived had thrown the serene community into mourning.

    Sources told our reporter on Thursday that the team members came from Development Dams and Irrigation Scheme in Kaduna State to carry out an assessment of the dam which had long been overdue for turnaround maintenance.

    Their boat was said to have capsized while they were sailing from one end of the dam to the other. Sources revealed that the small boat which could conveniently take four persons was overloaded with seven on board.

    According to the sources, the four victims who died in the incident did not wear life jackets while the three others who wore survived the disaster.

    The bodies of the victims were recovered by local fishermen mobilized to the scheme by Gbonyin Local Government Council Chairman, Mrs. Sade Akinrinmola.

    The council boss told reporters on telephone that he had contacted the community’s monarch, the Owa Egbe, Oba Ayodele Ige Olokesusi, on the tragic incident.

    Describing the incident as “unfortunate”, Mrs. Akinrinmola disclosed that the bodies of the victims have been deposited at the General Hospital, Ode Ekiti, headquarters of the council area.

    She said: “We immediately mobilised a rescue team and an ambulance and those wearing life jackets were rescued. The rescued people were the ones who told us that others were in the water. Their bodies were later retrieved by the local fishermen.

    “We believe that they (the victims) were there based on some of the proposals we had written on the dam and how it could be put to use and we believe that the World Bank had started work on the river based on the calls.”

    Police spokesman Alberto Adeyemi confirmed the incident which he said was still under investigation.

    Adeyemi said: “They must have come from the Federal Ministry because dams are owned by the Federal Government. It is true that their boat capsized, four of them died while three survived.”

  • World Bank hails Nigeria’s agric policy

    World Bank hails Nigeria’s agric policy

    A Senior Agricultural Economist at the World Bank, Dr. Tunji Oredipe, has hailed the Federal Government’s policy in the agric sector.

    Speaking on the agricultural policy of the Buhari administration on NTA in Abuja, Oredipe said the donor community was impressed this administation did not embark on a ‘policy sommersault’ in the agric sector.

    He said there was apprehension, being a new government and a different party from the preceding administration.

    According to the agricultural economist, “the fear has, however, been positively addressed with the policy document launched today”.

    He hoped that with the participation of financial institutions as the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Bank of Agriculture (BOA), Bank of Industry (BOI), and others, the “issue of finance for agriculture will be finally resolved as the donor community will support the initiative”.

    Oredipe praised the “selectivity in the process of participation with involvement of states and local governments, broadening of focused crops to include livestock and the change of fertiliser from general to location-based utilisation”.

     

  • World Bank funds Save One Million Lives Project with N140bn

    World Bank funds Save One Million Lives Project with N140bn

    The World Bank has funded the Saving One Million Lives (SOML) Project for Result  with the sum of N140 billion.

    The Minister of Health, Prof Isaac Adewole, who disclosed this yesterday in Abuja at the launch and symbolic disbursement of initial grant to states on “Saving One Million Lives Project for Result,” said that the  intervention is to tackle six pillars of health, namely, childhood essential medicines and increasing treatment of important childhood diseases, maternal, newborn and child health, improving child nutrition, immunisation, malaria control and elimination of mother to child transmission of HIV.

     All the 36 states, including the FCT, were given $1.5m of the grant after a process of negotiation between the federal government and the World Bank, as states are expected to receive reward incentive in multiples of $205,000 for every increase in coverage of the six pillars.

    Prof. Adewole said the project was imperative to eliminating maternal and infant mortality in the country.

    According to him, the issue of maternal and infant mortality which has been on the front burner for many years, was worrisome, adding that the present government was ready to make provision for skilled birth attendants as well as quality medical equipment for services.

    His words: “The rate of infant and maternal mortality is worrisome. We want to ensure that our mothers and children are no longer regarded as disposables. They survive and that when people are ill, they are confident to visit the health care centres for treatment.”

    “It is our hope that states will utilize these funds to boost maternal and child health care delivery in the primary health care centres in the country,” he added.

    The minister also explained that the programme was targeted at achieving universal health coverage at the end of 2019.

    He said: “At the end of four years, we should be able to raise the immunization coverage for the poor to the same level with those who are rich in order to improve antenatal coverage for poor people, to ensure they have skilled birth attendants and that we also elevate contraceptive usage.”

    Listing what the federal government seeks to achieve with the grants, he said the programme sought to create at least about 280,000 jobs for unemployed youths.

    Adewole further warned the states to make judicious use of the funds as the government has shifted from input to output based performance which will qualify them for the next grants only when there is evi