The Cross River State government announced that it received the sum of $20.4 million as World Bank grant for the States Fiscal Transparency Accountability and Sustainability (SFTAS) programme.
This was disclosed by the Finance Commissioner, Mr Asuquo Ekpenyong, on Friday in Calabar, during a press briefing.
The Commissioner said the state was able to receive the grant due to being scored high marks by independent verification assessors for the programme.
- “The assessment exercise, conducted in September 2020 by the Independent Verification Assessors from the office of the Auditor-General of the Federation, showed that we achieved six disbursement linked indicators (DLIs) out of the nine applicable for 2019 and 100 percent for 2020 additional financing,” Ekpenyong said.
He added that the report showed Cross River had improved its public debt and fiscal framework.
- “The report also indicates that the state has strengthened its public debt management and fiscal responsibility framework, improved debt and instituted a more transparent budgeting process over the course of the fiscal year,” he said.
Cross River state government said the grant would be used to finance part of its 2021 budget.
What you should know
- The World Bank SFTAS loan between the FG and the bank was agreed in 2018, valued at $750 million with a grace period of 5 years and maturity of 30 years. The aim of the loan is to help strengthen fiscal transparency, accountability and sustainability in the participating states.
- The program is a hybrid with two components of activities that support Nigerian states to achieve the key result areas of the program: (1) a performance-based financing component for state governments, which will be implemented as a PforR; and (2) a technical assistance (TA) component for states and selected national-level institutions, which will be implemented as an investment project financing (IPF).
- Nairametrics recently reported that the Kwara State Government won the 2019/2020 World Bank-supported State Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability (SFTAs) award. The award came with a monetary reward of $16.9 million and was the highest ever achieved by the state since the initiative began in 2018.
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