The Federal Government has revealed that the total results achieved under the Nigeria Community Action for Resilience and Economic Stimulus (NG-CARES) programme in the last three years of its implementation amount to $834 million.
The Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning, Dr Vitalis Emeka Obi who disclosed this at the opening of a two-day stakeholders consultative meeting of the NG-CARES programme in Abuja said, this is in spite of the fact that the World Bank reimbursed only $645 million of the $750 million package for the programme.
“This shows a 29 percent over and above the amount reimbursed,” he said.
He said this is to show the acceptability and commitment of the state government’s to the programme, adding that a unique feature of NG-CARES programme is total ownership by the sub-nationals and the use of Programme for Results as the lending instrument at the State level.
“The ongoing consultative process is an essential exercise in aligning our strategies towards emancipation of Nigeria out of the clutches of poverty and under development. Let us engage deeply, bringing to bear, our experiences, aspirations and love for our Motherland as we work to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the NG-CARES Programme,” he said.
Obi said the Federal Government will continue to implement policies that ensure that the poor and vulnerable in the country are well catered for.
“Though our country is currently bedevilled by myriads of challenges, the responsibility of caring for the poor and vulnerable is a task that cannot be relegated,” he said and charged participants to make inputs that would ensure that the second phase of NG-CARES is even bigger and achieve better results.
The two-day consultative meeting was for stakeholders to collectively brainstorm on the weaknesses of the current design of NG-CARES and make inputs that will go into the redesign of the second phase of the programme.
Also speaking, the World Bank Task Team Lead for NG-CARES, Lire Ersado, said that one unique thing about the second phase of NG-CARES is that the process is designed by Nigerians, adding that it is not going to be from the World Bank, “it is a home grown programme from Nigeria,” he said.
Ersado noted that the World Bank has given a go ahead to prepare phase two of the programme.
“The reason we are having this meeting is because NG-CARES 1.0 has done a great job. The World Bank will not allow additional financing if a programme is not performing well. The performance of the current programme is a requirement for the consideration for additional financing,” he said.
He informed that he is optimistic that the World Bank will give approval for the take off of the second phase of the programme early next year.
In his remarks, the National Coordinator of NG-CARES, Dr. Abdulkarim Obaje, said though the programme is moving to phase two, there is no cause for alarm for states that were unable to complete some of the result areas in the first phase of the programme.
According to him, “The performance for result (P4R) lending instrument of the programme allows states a lot of flexibility to determine which of the 11 disbursement linked indicators (DLIs) they would like to implement. We have even put in more flexibility such that even if you said you want to implement a particular DLI and you are finding it difficult to implement, you can drop it and choose another one. The Important thing is are you providing veritable service for the poor and vulnerable in your state, if you are doing that, we are fine.”
He also informed that the DLIs are being reviewed based on the experiences from the first phase.
Those that are not very implementable and those that are not producing good results will be revised.