Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr Wale Edun has revealed that the federal government is in talks with the World Bank for a $1.5billion budget support facility.
Edun who disclosed this at the Nigerian Delegation briefing on the sideline of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)/World Bank Annual Meeting in Marrakech, Morocco, noted that there is no stigma attached to qualifying for World Bank funding to help finance development.
He said;
“On the talks with the World Bank on $1.5billion budget support; that is correct. The World Bank is the number one multilateral development bank helping developing countries or funding developing countries projects and programmes and sectors.
“It has free money through International Development Association (IDA). It is for the poorer countries; and right now, I think we qualify as one of the countries that can borrow in the normal window of World Bank funding but also some concessionary IDA funding, and that means that effectively, the interest rate will be zero.
“In this particular case, it has long been in the pipeline, and we are hoping that funding would come through soon. There is a Federal Executive Council meeting on Monday that should be able to discuss this, as well as other initiatives for financing on reasonable terms. We have talked about the high costs of money, the World Bank money is the cheapest.”
On IMF’s advice to increase taxes and interest rate, Edun stated that the country has no loan programme in the offing with them, and so, not privy to where they proposed to Nigeria to increase taxes and interest rates.
