President of African Development Bank (AfDB) Dr Adewumi Adesina has revealed that, the bank’s total active portfolio in Nigeria is over six billion dollars.
According to Adesina winner of World Food Laureate Award in Agriculture in the U.S in 2017, the bank which strongly supports Nigeria rallied support for a budget of 600 million dollars to help build a more resilient economy specifically When Nigeria was going through a tough economic period.
“For instance, we invested over 300 million dollars from the private sector part of the bank in Dangote industries, Petro-chemical industries and the fertiliser manufacturing companies".
“100 millions dollars was also invested in the Indorama fertiliser companies as well and they are looking at us to do more".
He added that the bank has been instrumental in supporting the Federal Government's recovery effort in the North East, making emphases to the huge investment made by President Buhari in rebuilding the North East.
“We have Basic Livelihood Support Programme for over 250 million dollars that we have done for the North East of Nigeria, “on agriculture, the Board has just approved a programme called Enable Youth".
“we are investing about 430 million dollars in the initiative which is targeted at creating a generation of young commercial farmers in Nigeria".
Adesina, also highlighted the banks effort in assisting commercial banks give loan to small and medium size enterprises.
“We have invested a lot in the transmission companies of Nigeria, We are also helping them to have an additional 200 million dollars to post bonds, to be able to raise money to modernise the transmission network in Nigeria".
“Nigeria is a big market for us and we are going forward in terms of our planning investment over the next three years".
“ It will be over 4.1 billion dollars that we are planning for Nigeria that will cover agriculture, infrastructure, power sector, basic livelihood in terms of water and sanitation,’’ he said.
Adesina, however, expressed optimism over the implementation of the bank projects in Nigeria, stressing that there was a very stringent monitoring system to ensure implementation of set targets.
“We are going to do better because the more we can do that, the more we can actually show better impact in Nigeria".
“Having talked to the authority to help us improve the time, it takes between when we approve something and when it is signed, it becomes effective in Nigeria.”
NAN
