World Bank to Disburse Additional $750m for States’ Transparency Initiative

13 Jul World Bank to Disburse Additional $750m for States’ Transparency Initiative

The World Bank is to disburse an additional $750 million to strengthen the implementation of the States Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability (SFTAS) scheme.

The scheme was approved for Nigeria in December 2020 to support the implementation of the National Executive Council’s (NEC) COVID-19 Plan.

At a national workshop on Citizens Accountability Report (CAR) template under the SFTAS, which held in Lagos State for Southern states, Programme Manager of the SFTAS/Open Government Partnership (OGP) Nigeria, Mr. Andrew Onyeanakwe, during the workshop, said: “Additional financing of $ 750 million to expand the programme to support state (governments) to implement the NEC COVID-19 Plan in response to COVID-19 was approved by the World Bank Board in December 2020.”

He explaind that the disbursement is a loan from the World Bank to the federal government to be provided as conditional performance-based grants to state governments that actually achieved results under the SFTAS programme.

He said: “Let me re-emphasise that this is a grant and not a loan to the states, so the burden of repayment is on the federal government. The grants are performance-based so are not shared across the board according to a formula like the monthly FAAC transfers to states where every state government takes something home regardless of fiscal performance.