The Islamic Development Bank has approved a $125 million loan under AB Seed for Abia State for the implementation of its 2024 Budget of over N567.2 billion.
The state governor, Alex Otti announced this, yesterday, during his monthly press briefing tagged “Otti Speaks” for the month of March at the Government House, Umuahia.
He said the African Development Bank had also approved a loan for the state just as some commercial banks had indicated interest to offer similar facilities to the state.
His words: “Two days ago, the Islamic Development Bank approved the sum of $125 million as loan for us for the implementation of the budget.”
However, Otti, who disclosed that the administration was yet to draw from any of the facilities until the purposes they were proposed for were properly scrutinised.
“We do not want to draw the loans until we need them and will repay when we have liquidity, and we will pay later,” the economist/ex-bank chief added.
On general terms, he said his 10 months old administration had done excellently well in all sectors considering the condition it met the state and the resources available to it.
On the lingering issue of pension arrears, he assured that sequel to a resolution by the executive council meeting, the arrears would be liquidated at the end of the month.
He said the administration had taken note of complaints by some civil servants over non-payment of their salaries, blaming it on errors detected during the staff verification exercise.
While assuring that the salaries would be paid as soon as the errors were corrected, the governor added that money for payment of the salaries were available in banks.
He denied that the administration was tampering with the local government federation account allocation, adding that the mayors had been given free hands to manage the funds.
Otti urged those harbouring such belief to tour the local governments to observe for themselves what the mayors are doing in service delivery as against what were obtained in the past.
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