The World Bank and Nigeria are in talks for as much as $2.5 billion in a new tranche of concessionary lending to Africa\u2019s most populous country, Vice President for Africa Hafez Ghanem said.<\/p>\n
In the past year Nigeria received $2.4 billion from the World Bank, Ghanem said in an interview in Abuja, the West African nation\u2019s capital, late on Wednesday. \u201cWe\u2019re talking about a new set of programs of about the same amount, it should be around $2.5 billion,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Faced with revenue shortfalls as the output and price of oil, Nigeria\u2019s main export, fell in the past five years, President Muhammadu Buhari\u2019s administration has increased borrowing to finance government spending, with domestic debt at $55.6 billion and foreign loans at $25.6 billion.<\/p>\n
To ease the mounting debt burden, Nigeria has sought more credit with low interest and long repayment periods from institutions including the World Bank and the African Development Bank.<\/p>\n
The World Bank\u2019s focus in Nigeria is to lift about 100 million Nigerians, half of the population, out of poverty, with special emphasis on women\u2019s education, expanding digital opportunities and solving a power crisis that hobbles economic activities.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s important to resolve the problems of the power sector in Nigeria to bring in more investments,\u201d Ghanem said. \u201cBecause you need to bring down the cost of power to make the economy more competitive for the development of industries.\u201d<\/p>\n
The World Bank is supporting digital transformation in Nigeria because of its potential ability to transform other areas of the economy including industry, agriculture and services, according to Ghanem.<\/p>\n
\u201cNigeria has a comparative advantage in that area because of the youth, a majority of the population is young,\u201d he said. \u201cSo if we want to create jobs, we need to invest much more in the digital economy.\u201d<\/p>\n
To contact the reporter on this story: Dulue Mbachu in Abuja at dmbachu@bloomberg.net<\/p>\n
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Paul Richardson at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net, Helen Nyambura, Hilton Shone<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The World Bank and Nigeria are in talks for as much as $2.5 billion in a new tranche of concessionary lending to Africa\u2019s most populous country, Vice President for Africa Hafez Ghanem said. In the past year Nigeria received $2.4 billion from the World Bank, Ghanem said in an interview in Abuja, the West African […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":7886,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,15],"tags":[503,105,580],"class_list":["post-15663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-economy","tag-cbn","tag-economy-of-nigeria","tag-world-bank"],"yoast_head":"\n