The Anambra State Government has restated its determination to continue to strengthen its partnership with the World Bank in areas of development projects’ financing as a strategic step towards actualizing broad-based development of the state.
The State Governor, Willie Obiano, made the promise at the Governor’s Lodge, when he received a team of World Bank officials led by Country Director in Nigeria, Rachid Benmessaoud.
Obiano noted that the bank had intervened in funding projects in the education, agriculture and other critical sectors of the state’s economy and expressed happiness, particularly on the bank’s assistance in tackling the menace of erosion in 975 sites across the state.
Noting that farmers in the state are now engaged in year-round farming due to the support received from the bank on irrigation projects, the governor promised that his “administration will ensure the realisation of the noble objective of the bank through judicious use of funds and project implementation.’’
In his remarks, the state’s Commissioner for Economic Planning and Budget, Mr. Mark Okoye, disclosed that the World Bank was funding about 12 projects in the state annually.
He listed some of the programmes in which the bank’s intervention funds were being utilised as the Anambra State and Local Government Reform Project (ANSLOGOR), Anambra State Education Programme Investment Project (ANSEPIP), the Rural Electrification, Rural Access and Agricultural Marketing and Saving One million lives projects.
Available records on the bank’s interventions in the state showed that it had provided grants to the state government to the tune of about $140 million.
In his assessment of the bank’s Country Programme Portfolio Review, Benmessaoud said that Anambra State emerged as the best in execution of development projects in the South-East and South-South.
The banker explained that Programme Review was being done yearly in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Finance to appraise success of its interventions across the country.
According to him, the bank has deployed $10 billion in financing development projects in the country, adding that the review is being conducted primarily to ensure that the projects being funded are properly implemented to impact positively on the citizenry.
