The Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) has disclosed that plans are afoot for the January 2023 launch of the $750 million World Bank-funded Business Enabling Reforms Programme.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo stated this during a meeting of the PEBEC where he received briefing on the State Action on the programme, coordinated by the secretariat and the World Bank.
The $750million operation comprises two main areas: a $730m Program-for-Results Financing component and a $20m technical assistance for investment project financing.
A statement by a media aide to the vice president, Laolu Akande, quoted him to have said that the kind of business environment Nigeria required for significant economic growth could only be achieved through hard work at the sub-national level.
He added that “the states’ process is a very important one and expressed hopes that states will be able to spend individually, a fair amount of time trying to work out how this will work in actual practice in the various states.
He noted that at the federal level, it had been a major challenge “just trying to coordinate agencies and parastatals.”
In her remarks, the Special Adviser on Ease of Doing Business and Secretary of PEBEC, Dr. Jumoke Oduwole, stated that “we have been collaborating for over two years in conceptualizing the SABER Program. It is the first programme of this size that the World Bank is embarking on at this scale globally.”
She explained that SABER, a three-year programme running from January 2023 to December 2025, was a performance-based intervention jointly designed by the World Bank and the PEBEC Secretariat with support from the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning and the Nigeria Governors’ Forum Secretariat.
