NG-CARES Is World Bank, FG Initiative, Says BOI

The Bank of Industry(BOI) said, the Nigeria COVID-19 Action Recovery and Economic Stimulus (NG-CARES) programme is an initiative of the World Bank and the federal government of Nigeria, disclosing that, the scheme is not BOI Programme as some have claimed.

The programme, which was designed to support the recovery of communities, households, and businesses affected by COVID-19, is state-owned, as state governments are fully responsible for funding and the selection of beneficiaries.

In a statement released on its website, the BOI said, “the attention of the bank has been drawn to questions seeking to clarify the implementation and disbursement of grants under the NG-CARES programme.”

According to the BOI, the funding arrangement allows each state the autonomy to allocate their preferred grant sizes and number of grants across different programme components as approved by the World Bank.

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To this end, it said, the World Bank only nominated the bank to provide this infrastructure for the delivery of the MSME component of NG-CARES (RA3) nationwide, based on its track record of building field networks and technology infrastructure for the transparent implementation of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises(MSME) intervention programmes.

Following this nomination, it added that, 28 out of 33 States chose BOI as their preferred execution partner to leverage the bank’s MSME infrastructure to deliver NG-CARES.

It pointed out that, “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, which 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.”