The regional impact of West Africa’s Ebola epidemic could reach $32.6 billion by the end of 2015 if it spreads significantly beyond the worst-hit countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the World Bank said on Wednesday.
“The enormous economic cost of the current outbreak to the affected countries and the world could have been avoided by prudent ongoing investment in health systems-strengthening,” Reuters quoted World Bank President, Jim Yong Kim, as saying in a statement.
The World Bank has cut China’s growth forecast for this year to below Beijing’s target of 7.5 per cent.
The World Bank has cut China’s growth forecast for the next three years as the country tackles structural reforms.
Growth in the world’s second-largest economy will fall to 7.4 per cent from a previous estimate of 7.6 per cent, it said.
“In China, growth will gradually slow, as efforts to address financial vulnerabilities and structural constraints increase,” the lender said.
Growth in 2015 will go down to 7.2 per cent and then 7.1 per cent in 2016 from a previous forecast of 7.5per centfor both years.
The World Bank has become the latest in a series of major banks to downgrade their outlook for China on growth concerns.
In September, US bank Goldman Sachs cut the country’s growth forecast to 7.1 per cent from 7.6 per cent in 2015 and kept this year’s forecast at 7.3 per cent, below Beijing’s target of 7.5 per cent.
Louis Kuijs, greater China chief economist at RBS, said it was likely China would miss its official growth target this year, because the government was “okay” with slower growth.
“Unlike our previous expectations, the government is not extremely forceful in trying to meet its 7.5per cent growth target,” Mr Kuijs said.
“One of the key messages coming from these forecasts is that the government seems all right with a little bit weaker growth than its target, as long as things like the labour market are holding up.”
Chinese authorities have repeatedly said there is no dramatic change to its policy, despite a series of weaker than expected economic data from the Asian giant.
Growth will slow as the Chinese government tries to “strike a balance” between containing growth risks and meeting growth targets, the World Bank added.
“Measures to contain local government debt, curb shadow banking and tackle excess capacity, high energy demand, and high pollution will reduce investment and manufacturing output,” the World Bank said.
The bank also cut its growth forecast for developing countries in the East Asia region for the next two years, from 7.1 per cent to 6.9 per cent, as global trade growth slows.
The Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) has urged the World Bank to adopt a comprehensive labour standard lending requirement in its institutions. It said this is necessary because those adopted by other multilateral development banks to correct the major weaknesses in the draft labour safeguard that was recently issued for consultation were inadequate.
Its Executive Director, Auwal Musa Rafsanjani who spoke in Lagos while reviewing the labour standard version proposed for those who work in bank-financed projects, stressed the need for the World Bank President, Jim Yong Kim, to ensure that the proposal would be to all good intents and purposes and not exist only on paper.
According to the CISLAC boss, an important feature of all the other banks’ labour safeguards in the past has been their application to contractors and sub-contractors, thus ensuring coverage of a category of workers that are highly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.
He emphasised that the major weakness of the World Bank’s draft labour safeguard is the proposal that the International Labour Organisation (ILO’s) core labour standards should only be fully complied with if they are incorporated in national law.
“Specifically, the freedom of association and right to collective bargaining provisions would apply only where national law recognises them, thus opening the door to retaliatory measures by project managers against workers who wish to exercise those rights.
“We fully hope and expect that the World Bank will catch up to the labour standards provisions adopted by the other development finance institutions over the past several years, and not undermine the progress that has been made by adopting a labour safeguard that is full of exemptions and exclusions,” he said.
The World Bank is partnering the Ibadan Business School (IBS) on capacity building.
This is the first time the global institution will be working with the institution.
The deal would enable the institution to deliver training programmes for the public sector and the micro, small and medium scale enterprises (MSMEs), by leveraging on the World Bank.
“The nation is facing the challenge of transiting from a developing to a developed state, where the private sector will drive the economy. Developing this strategic missing link is the focus of IBS and we are happy that the World Bank has identified our strong point and has decided to partner with us in this regard,” said the President/Founder of the school, Mr. Yinka Fasuyi.
He expressed optimism that the partnership would be of benefit to the economy, considering that the World Bank will make available to the IBS its training programmes for the ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) of all the three tiers of government and also the MSMEs.
In a letter to IBS, dated August 29, this year, the World Bank, said: “We have since visited your facilities and I am happy to inform you that the World Bank is willing to partner with your institution and to introduce your programmes to World Bank supported project teams in Nigeria.”
The IBS Board Chairman Prof. Oladapo Afolabi, , said the partnership represented an endorsement of the school’s programmes. He described the deal as unique, saying the IBS is the only business school in the country that tailored its programmes to suit the need of the economy.
A former Managing Director of Oodua Group of Companies and director of the institution, Dr. Adebayo Jimoh, described the partnership good. He said the recognition by the World Bank had shown that IBS was on the right path in building the critical capacity needed to grow the economy.
Jimoh explained that unlike other business schools, IBS develops programmes tailored towards the economy, using indigenous case studies in discovering the secrets why some local brands have not only become successful, but have emerged on the global scene despite the challenges militating against businesses in the country.
IBS’s Vice Chairman, Chief Wole Olanipekun, said the partnership, was a confirmation that the school is not a regional or a local, but a global institution which offers global solutions to local situations.
For him, if within two years of its establishment, the school had attracted the attention of the global bank, it means it could rank at par and could proudly compare itself with the best business schools anywhere.
“We may not appreciate it now, soon, Nigerians will recognise that a big bang has taken off in the country,” he said.
The World Bank has injected about $200 million into Nigeria’s power sector.
Speaking yesterday at the ongoing National Council on Power (NACOP) in Abuja, the Resident Country Representative of the United Nation’s Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), Mr. Patrick Kormawa, said the core interest area of his organisation is sustainable power sector in Nigeria as typified by the on-going sector reform.
He praised the government for approving the forum as it has brought all stakeholders. He insisted that development of partnerships is in consonance with UNIDO’s interest in the devolvement of sustainable power sector in the country.
He said it is a very important variable in the overall efforts at economic prosperity and job creation efforts of the government.
Kormawa said the conference could not have come at a better time than now as it will provide the platform that helps in strengthening partnership among all the key stakeholders on the important subject matter – Power, as the federal, state and local governments come on the same page.
He said the platform would also help to bring development partners on a round table with other stakeholders. This he hopes, will galvanise activities in such a manner that investors would have more confidence in the sector.
He said: “Private sector is investing huge sums of money in power to resuscitate a once dormant sector of the economy; it would require the collaboration of all to ensure success of the whole exercise.
“When you have partnership built around a strong support base of stakeholders it will facilitate power access.”
The UNIDO chief noted that with the nation’s abundant resources both in renewable and other energy sources could easily be developed for generation of power.
UNIDO he said is interested in the sector because without power, industrialisation is a mirage.
Also speaking on the sideline of the event, Chairperson, Emergency Committee on the Northeast, Professor Soji Adelaja, said there is need to ensure that the root causes of non-access to power by the large number of people in the region is partly responsible for the insurgency and insecurity prevalent in the area.
He said the task of his body is to galvanise economic recovery using energy availability to drive employment creation and economic prosperity, as fundamental deliberative to calm nerves down and reduce unrest.
He said: “In the age and time of new knowledge economy, we cannot afford 50 per cent of the people and their land mass to live their lives without access to energy.”
As a visionary leader, Mr. President is poise to radically address access to power through the Roadmap, privatization, just as he observed that a solid foundation has been laid to ensure Government plays less role in the sector.
• As minister charges states on collaborative effort
The World Bank, African Development Bank (AfDB), French Development Agency (FDA), and Japan International Corporation Agency (JICA), have said it will support Nigeria with $638million new financial commitment to boost water supply and sanitation in the country.
The Country Directors of each of the donor agencies announced the new financial commitment in Abuja during a two day workshop with the theme: “Strengthening the Implementation of Urban Water Sector Reform in Nigeria.”
The World Bank Country Director, Marie Francoise Marie-Nelly disclosed that the bank had provided a support bank financing of $250million for the third phase of water sector reform in Bauchi, Rivers, Ekiti, and Cross River state.
She said the lack of access to water and sanitation in Nigeria was not acceptable, adding that women spend months looking for safe drinking water.
The Deputy Country Director AfDB, Mrs. Babara Barungi said the bank was providing a finance facility of $205million to boost water supply and sanitation in Rivers State, adding that the bank have Invested $760million in the sector since 1986.
She called for improved financial management in states where the projects are located.
The French Development Agency (AFD) Country Director, Hubert Dogin said the agency will assist Ogun State with $33million in its Urban Water Reform Project.
He said the funds will assist the World Bank investment in its third phase programme to increase access to water, sanitation.
The JICA country Director, Seki Tetsuo said the Agency is approving $150million on development of water facilities.
He said JICA was working towards building capacities of State Water Board Agencies to improve the provision of utilities to consumers.
In her response, the Minister of Water Resources, Mrs. Sarah Ochekpe said despite the intervention of the donor agencies, the states were not doing well in implementing the urban water sector reform.
She urged governors of benefiting states to give support and create enabling environment for the project to thrive.
•Anti-Polio efforts also slowed down, says Bill Gates
Threats and killings by Islamist militants are jeopardizing World Bank-funded agriculture, health and water projects in parts of Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad, a bank official said yesterday.
Makhtar Diop, a vice president for the financial institution, said Boko Haram’s terrorism has set back projects to improve the livelihoods of people in famine-stricken northern Nigeria and Cameroon and southern Chad.
The American billionaire philanthropist, Bill Gates said separately that insurgency by Boko Haram is affecting a donor-backed target to record no cases of polio in Nigeria.
In northern Cameroon, a high-poverty area that’s vulnerable to natural disasters, a $108 million grant is stagnating instead of rehabilitating embankments, dams and irrigation systems and improving disaster-preparedness.
Diop met with Cameroon President Paul Biya to discuss how Boko Haram has created panic and slowed the execution of some World Bank-financed projects.
Diop told the Voice of America (VOA) they talked about economic development and how to increase “the conditions of peace and stability … and try also to see how we can strengthen all the social protection programs to alleviate poverty.”
Investors and foreign workers also are leaving far northern Cameroon. Chinese road construction engineers left Mora, on the border with Nigeria, after suspected Boko Haram members kidnapped 10 of their workers in May.
Cameroon, Benin, Chad, Niger and Nigeria declared war on Boko Haram in May, weeks after the militant group kidnapped at least 276 girls from their school in the Nigerian village of Chibok, in Borno State.
Bill Gates told reporters in Addis Ababa that effort to eradicate polio in Nigeria is being hampered by the Boko Haram insurgency in the North.
Authorities suspect gunmen from the Islamist sect abducted three health workers giving vaccinations in Bauchi state in March and killed nine others in attacks on polio immunization centers in Kano last year.
“This Boko Haram disruption is the one real cloud on the horizon where it means there are groups of children we’re not able to get to,” Gates said.
“So we’re hopeful that won’t get even more intense.”
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation supports the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in three polio-endemic nations – Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan – as well as other African countries where there’s a risk the disease could spread.
According to Amnesty International, more than 1,500 civilian deaths have been reported amid increasing violence and assaults by the violent group in the past five years.
Threats and killings by Boko Haram militants are jeopardizing World Bank-funded agriculture, health and water projects in parts of Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad, a bank official said Friday.
A vice president for the financial institution, Makhtar Diop, said insurgency has set back projects to improve the livelihoods of people in famine-stricken northern Nigeria, Cameroon and southern Chad.
The American billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates said separately that insurgency by Boko Haram is affecting a donor-backed target to record no cases of polio in Nigeria.
In northern Cameroon, a high-poverty area that’s vulnerable to natural disasters, a $108 million grant is stagnating instead of rehabilitating embankments, dams and irrigation systems and improving disaster-preparedness.
Diop met with Cameroon President Paul Biya to discuss how Boko Haram has created panic and slowed the execution of some World Bank-financed projects.
Diop told the Voice of America (VOA) they talked about economic development and how to increase “the conditions of peace and stability and try also to see how we can strengthen all the social protection programs to alleviate poverty.”
Investors and foreign workers also are leaving far northern Cameroon. Chinese road construction engineers left Mora, on the border with Nigeria, after suspected Boko Haram members kidnapped 10 of their workers in May.
Cameroon, Benin, Chad, Niger and Nigeria declared war on Boko Haram in May, weeks after the militant group kidnapped at least 276 girls from their school in Chibok, Borno Sstate.
Bill Gates told reporters in Addis Ababa that effort to eradicate polio in Nigeria is being hampered by the Boko Haram insurgency in the north.
Nigeria’s short term macroeconomic outlook improved in the first half of this year relative to 2013, according to the World Bank in its new Nigeria Economic Report (NER) launched yesterday in Abuja.
The report states: Revenues to the Federation have increased, foreign reserves have stabilised, the Excess Crude Account (ECA) has been augmented, and prospects for growth are stronger than last year.”
The stabilisation of foreign reserves the World Bank said, “reflects greater confidence among investors. Following a year of decline, foreign reserves stabilised in April-May, in the context of improved confidence of investors.
The precise causes of this stabilization the World Bank noted, will need to be assessed further when more data becomes available. “Yet the partial stabilisation of expectations of investors concerning oil prices, fiscal policy, and the commitment of the Central Bank to defending the exchange rate is clearly important,” said the World Bank.
Expectations about the performance of the oil sector, it said, have improved in general, bolstered by increases in oil revenues accruing to the government.
The World Bank, using the International Labour Organisation (ILO), definition, stated that “unemployment rate in Nigeria, according to a usual ILO definition, is likely lower than 10 per cent.
This, it said, “is the conclusion that comes from unofficial assessments, including that of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), and does not contradict the fact that the scarcity of jobs is the number one economic in Nigeria”.
As in many other developing countries, the report noted, “most Nigerians cannot afford to be completely unemployed”. “Those without good productive employment therefore typically engage in various low productivity and low paying tasks for survival.”
Unemployment, the report said, “may be better understood as an underemployment problem corresponding to a scarcity of high productivity jobs, and in many cases of highly qualified candidates to fill those jobs”. “These additional jobs and qualifications need to be created in Nigeria through accelerated private sector growth in the cities and improvements in the country’s education system.”
The re-based GDP estimates reveal a larger, more dynamic and complex economy than did previous statistics, said the report, stresses that macroeconomic risks remain due to uncertainty about future oil output, oil prices and short term capital flows.
The NER analyses new data from household surveys in 2010/2011 and 2012/2013 to reassess poverty and living standards in Nigeria and “concludes that poverty rates in Nigeria are likely significantly lower than previously believed, and progress toward poverty reduction may be stronger”.
According to the report, “poverty reduction in Nigeria appears to be primarily an urban phenomenon, with poverty rates in rural areas higher, and poverty reduction slower”.
While recent panel surveys indicate that the per capita national poverty rate based on the official poverty line may now be as low as 33.1 per cent, a large share of the Nigerian population the report said “is still not far above the poverty line, indicating vulnerability.”
“The combination of the new GDP and poverty estimates is valuable in giving us what we believe to be a clearer picture of development and poverty reduction in Nigeria,” said John Litwack, Lead Economist and Acting Country Manager of the World Bank.
The NER also highlights continuing differences between Nigeria’s regions in poverty reduction. The South and North Central regions show progress in poverty reduction between 2010 and 2013. The North West witnessed little change, and the Northeast experienced an increase in the poverty rate along with a general decline in living standards.
“Improvements in public services, key infrastructure to better connect markets, and measures to increase productivity in agriculture could help put Northern regions on a strong path toward poverty reduction,” said Mr Litwack, lead author of the report, whilst also noting the critical role of security.
In 2013, federation revenues mirrored federal budgetary revenues which also fell short of expectations in 2013, despite coverage by the ECA of a good part of the shortfalls.
The World Bank report noted that “some expenditure items were not fully funded. In particular, the capital budget was significantly underfunded while recurrent expenditures and statutory transfers were almost fully funded. Actual capital spending in 2013 was 60 per cent of planned. The federal budget deficit for 2013 of 738.9 billion Naira was 17 per cent lower than projected and amounted to one percent of (re-based) GDP.”
The World Bank Group yesterday launched the new Country Partnership Strategy (CPS) to help the federal and state governments boost development in the country.
A statement from the World Bank said the CPS aims to make the objectives and outcomes of the strategy known to all beneficiaries, namely the federal and state government officials, the Ministries Department and Agencies (MDAs) (federal and state), media, civil society organisations (CSOs), the private sector, academics, researchers, professionals and other stakeholders.
According to the World Bank, Nigeria is now recognized as Africa’s largest economy, following its recent GDP rebasing exercise that it fully supported.
The World Bank said the new strategy’s endorsement comes at an appropriate time just as Nigeria is redoubling its efforts to tackle critical development challenges and is committing itself to lifting major constraints that are hindering it from achieving broad-based, inclusive economic growth and poverty reduction goals.
The new partnership strategy, jointly developed with the government, is supportive of the country’s Vision 20: 2020 plan and its Transformation Agenda which sets out the country’s long-term development objectives and the medium-term strategy for operationalising this vision.
The strategy includes support for a bold and ambitious programme of development targets and interventions for the next four years.
Specifically, the World Bank Group’s support for Nigeria is structured around three strategic priorities: Promoting growth and job creation by reforming the power sector; enhancing agricultural productivity, and increasing access to finance; improving the quality and efficiency of social service delivery at the state level to promote social inclusion and strengthening governance and public sector management, with gender equity and conflict sensitivity as essential elements of governance.
Nigeria’s Coordinating Minister for the Economy, and Minster of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, said “the new strategy supports our development objective.”
The minister also disclosed that “the World Bank was supporting the government to create jobs, access to finance as well as helping in starting a housing revolution in the country.”
World Bank Country Director for Nigeria, Marie Francoise Marie-Nelly, said: “The new strategy is a joint product, developed in close consultation with the government of Nigeria and stakeholders under the Country Assistance Framework, a strategic platform developed by Nigeria’s partners to coordinate interventions and leverage resources to deliver strong results and development solutions. It reflects Nigeria’s development aspirations and commits the World Bank Group to working hand-in-hand to unleash Nigeria’s potential for the benefit of all Nigerians.”
At the launch, the Governor of Kogi State,Idris Ichalla Wada called on Nigerians to “take ownership of the Country Partnership Strategy to ensure adequate dissemination as well as implementation of the document.”
On his part, Governor of Edo State Adams Oshiomhole, described the bank as a useful partner and expressed appreciation for the work being done in his state in the areas of agriculture, health, infrastructure, flood and erosion control as well as open governance.
He said: “Apart from making money available, the World Bank should be more interested in helping us better manage our resources and improve our efficiency. We see you as a leading light and pillar in the development of Edo State.”
The new CPS which covers the period of financial year 2014-2017 introduces a change in the country’s borrowing status. Nigeria has been declared credit worthy for International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) financing and officially entered blend status from July 1, 2014.
This means Nigeria can access World Bank Group funds through the International Development Association (IDA) and IBRD.