The World Bank has solicited the support of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, NGF, to set up a strategic design that would ensure the inflow of funds to strengthen the proposed economic recovery program.
The program tagged, Covid-19 Action Recovery and Economic Stimulus, CARES, is set to alleviate the pandemic’s adverse impact across various states in Nigeria with the involvement of World Bank.
The appeal was contained in a communique presented by the World Bank delegation headed by the Country Director for Nigeria, Shubham Chaudhuri, Yesterday, after the NGF 30th Teleconference.
To ensure the program succeeds, the world bank representative quickly requested that the governors show commitment, especially by allowing investigations where a case of fraud is detected, as this would help avert unforeseen saboteur of the CARE program.
Again, Chaudhuri appealed that the NGF give its ultimate support on the appropriation and institutionalisation of the necessary rules making the program accessible, transparent to the bank and the public in general.
Meanwhile, the world bank further solicited the aid of the governors in assuring to incorporate the release of 2021 state allocations to the Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs, to kick-start the CARE-related projects.
Chaudhuri said there’s the need for the governors to grant their ministries of finance and justice the permission to speed up the CARE program, articularly areas that concern the execution of subsidiary arrangements.
Responding, the Nigerian Governor’s Forum concurred with the propositions of the bank when it agreed to establish the needed legal framework and system for an effective States Fiscal Transparency Accountability and Sustainability, SFTAS.
Updating the Forum, Chairman, NGF, Dr Kayode Fayemi, spoke on the current consolidation exercise on the public finance data of the Federal, State and Local government.
He said there are talks between the governors and the budget office of the federation to strengthen the government’s financial data into a national budget portal.
Following the World Bank Delegation request, the Governor of Ekiti State urged other members of NGF to make available details of their local government budgets, including their financial statements.
Overall, an agreement has been stricken for all involved parties to meet the States Fiscal Transparency Accountability and Sustainability obligations.
Other governors made their presentations related to their states’ affairs. At the same time, the bank noted that thus far, updates on the SFTAS project reveal that the goals and objectives for results and disbursements on 2018-2019 Annual Performance Assessments APA indicators, among others, show improvement.