The Nigerian Government has approached the World Bank for a loan of $2.5bn.
World Bank’s Vice President for Africa, Hafez Ghanem, disclosed that they were in talks with the Nigerian government for the concessionary loan.
He further revealed that Nigeria had received $2.4bn from the global financial institution in 2018.
He said, “We’re talking about a new set of programmes of about the same amount, it should be about $2.5bn.
“It’s important to resolve the problems of the power sector in Nigeria to bring in more investments because you need to bring down the cost of power to make the economy more competitive for the development of industries.
“Nigeria has a comparative advantage in that area because of the youth, a majority of the population is young. So if we want to create jobs, we need to invest much more in the digital economy.”
Ghanem said the World Bank would support Nigeria’s digital transformation because of its potential ability to transform other areas of the economy including industry, agriculture and services, according to a report by Bloomberg.
SR