JUST IN: World Bank approves $2.25bn loan for Nigeria

The World Bank has approved two financing facilities of $2.25 billion for Nigeria to support the Federal Government’s efforts to stabilize the economy.

The approval was announced in a statement entitled, “Supporting Nigeria’s Homegrown Reforms: New World Bank Financing for Inclusive Growth and Revenue Diversification”.

The statement said: “The World Bank has today approved two operations: $1.5 billion for the Nigeria Reforms for Economic Stabilization to Enable Transformation, RESET, Development Policy Financing Program, DPF, and $750 million for the Nigeria Accelerating Resource Mobilization Reforms, ARMOR, Program-for-Results, PforR.

“This combined $2.25 billion package provides immediate financial and technical support to Nigeria’s urgent efforts to stabilize the economy and scale up support to the poor and most economically at risk.

“It further supports Nigeria’s ambitious, multi-year effort to raise non-oil revenues and safeguard oil revenues to promote fiscal sustainability and provide sufficient resources to deliver quality public services.

“Confronted with a fragile economic situation, Nigeria recognized the urgency of changing course and embarked on critical reforms to address economic distortions and strengthen the fiscal outlook.

“Initial critical steps to restore macroeconomic stability, boost revenues, and create the conditions to reignite growth and poverty reduction have been taken.

“These include unifying the multiple official exchange rates and fostering a market-determined official rate, as well as sharply adjusting gasoline prices to begin to phase out the costly, regressive, and opaque gasoline subsidy.

“The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, has refocused on its core mandate of price stability and is tightening monetary policy including by increasing interest rates, as is appropriate to reduce inflation.

“A targeted cash transfer program is being rolled out to cushion the impact of high inflation on the poor and economically insecure households.”

Commenting, Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, said: “We have embarked on bold and necessary reforms to restore macroeconomic stability and put the country back on a sustainable and inclusive economic growth path that will create quality jobs and economic opportunities for all Nigerians.”