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Kwara meets World Bank team over $18m devt grant

 

Kwara State Government on Monday met with a delegation of the
Independent Verification Agents (IVAs) as part of a competitive bid to
access $18m grant from the World Bank to fix infrastructural deficit.
Chairman of Kwara’s Steering Committee of the State Fiscal
Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability for Result (SFTAS),
AbdulAzeez Oyelowo, said the IVA team was visiting to check the
state’s compliance with the criteria required for any state to be
given the grants.
Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq had earlier constituted the steering
committee ahead of the meeting with the World Bank’s IVA to make a
strong case for Kwara as it continually meets all the requirements.
Oyelowo, who is the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Planning,
said Kwara has satisfied the first criteria that included ensuring
transparency and accountability, adding that the project begun since
2018 and would continue until 2021 but only qualified states would get
the grants.
“The federal government secured a loan of $750 million from the World
Bank, out of which $700million is for states that are performing in
terms of ensuring fiscal responsibility, transparency and good
governance at the subnational level,” he said.
“In accessing this, they came up with certain criteria for state to
qualify for assessment. Apart from two eligibility criteria states
must meet in the first place, there are other indicators that serve as
parameters on which each state will be assessed. The first criterion
any interested state must meet is to publish its annual budget online
on or before February of the year.
“Secondly, the audited financial statement must be ready on or before
September of the following year. Kwara state met these two criteria.
So, the IVAs are here to assess the nine indicators ranging from
budget reliability, improved Internally generated revenue, and other
parameters of good governance.”
Kwara is entitled to a maximum $18m of the $700m grant.
Kwara State Internal Revenue Service Chairman Folashade Omoniyi said
the IVA visited the state to evaluate the state on the 2018 SFTAS
exercise, a development she noted will help them improve on the result
in the fiscal year.
Adeagbo Ademola, the head of the IVAs team from the office of the
Auditor General of the Federation, said Kwara is one of the states
that have excelled in the first stage of assessment and that the visit
was to assess its continuous performance on other key indicators.
“The state, after meeting all the criteria at the end of the exercise,
will get its money released between February and March next year,” he
added.

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