- $80m from ADB for Ekiti Knowledge Zone
By Chesa Chesa
The Federal Executive Council (FEC) on Monday approved that Nigeria secures a loan of $1.5 billion from the World Bank through the International Development Association (IDA).
Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, announced this newsmen after the FEC meeting chaired by President Bola Tinubu at the Aso Rock Villa, Abuja.
The Minister explained that hr facility is on quite favourable terms because IDA “is really the virtually free or zero interest lending arm or financing arm of the World Bank”.
Explaining the need for he measure, Edun said that “as the developed world looks to fight inflation, they do it by restricting money, keeping interest rates high so that you can get inflation down.
“What that means is that interest rates for everybody else, become not just high but very painful, if not unaffordable, within that context.
“Nigeria has been able to make the kind of macro economic moves, and has been able to take the tough decisions to restore balance in the economy in the government’s finances that has warranted support, that has engendered and has elicited even support from the multilateral development banks.
“And it is on the basis of that, that the World Bank is willing to consider and to process on our behalf $1.5 billion of concessional financing, relatively cheap financing and financing that will be dispensed relatively quickly.
“And that was what was presented to the Federal Executive Council and the members approved that we go ahead with that financing, and that it is affordable.”
Also approved by the FEC is an $80 million financing from the African Development Bank (ADB) for a project in Ekiti State called the Ekiti Knowledge Zone (EKZ) project.
Edun explained that is “basically to support young people and their quest to take on technology to use it to be employed, to be trained and to benefit from being part of the knowledge economy, being part of the technological wave that is present very much in Nigeria, which is becoming a bigger and bigger share of the economy.
“So it’s $80 million to help the young people in the sector of knowledge economy, technology and communications generally.”
