The Bank of Industry has announced that the World Bank has approved its nomination as a provider of the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) component of NG-CARES (RA3) nationwide.
In a statement titled, ‘Clarification of the Nigeria COVID-19 Action Recovery and Economic Stimulus programme’, BoI said that the development was based on its successful track record of building field networks and technology infrastructure for the transparent implementation of MSME intervention programmes.
“The World Bank nominated the bank to provide this infrastructure for the delivery of the MSME Component of NG-CARES (RA3) nationwide”, it stated.
According to the statement, the NG-CARES is an initiative of the World Bank and the Federal Government of Nigeria to support the recovery of communities, households, and businesses affected by COVID-19.
It said the programme is state-owned, and state governments were fully responsible for funding and selection of beneficiaries.
It added that following the nomination, 28 out of 33 states chose BoI as their preferred execution partner to leverage the Bank’s MSME infrastructure to deliver NG-CARES.
The statement read in part: “Under this partnership, the states are solely responsible for nominating the beneficiaries and selecting those to be disbursed to, following successful verification. BoI’s role as execution partner is to manage the end-to-end application and verification processes, and present successful candidates to enable states’ decision-making for disbursements. BoI disburses as instructed by the state.
“So far, BoI has received over one million applications for the NG-CARES MSME grants across states. While several beneficiaries may apply or be nominated, beneficiaries do not receive the grant if they do not meet the criteria to qualify, or if their state does not select them for disbursement as the state seeks to manage the funding available for the programme and ensure the equitable distribution of benefits across business categories, local government areas, gender or other demographics”.
BoI said that the funding arrangement allowed each state the autonomy to allocate their preferred grant sizes and number of grants across different programme components as approved by the World Bank.
