18m Nigerians will become poorer in 2009, says World Bank
* Govt seeks $1b loan to fight malaria
From Mathias Okwe, Abuja
MORE Nigerians will fall into the poverty line this year, the World Bank has said.
According to the Bretton Woods institution, Nigeria will account for 18 of the 90 million Africans that will sink below the poverty line in 2009.
World Bank Country Director, Dr. Onno Ruhl, who disclosed this in Abuja yesterday, hinged the bank’s position on the worsening global economy.
He said economic forecast for 2009 might not be feasible because the current global financial crisis was getting worse and therefore difficult to predict how soon it would end.
“So far, every next step has been more negative than the previous. The average African will be poorer in 2009 because predicted growth rate of two per cent will be much lower than birth rate,” he asserted.
He also disclosed that the Federal Government has approached the World Bank for a $1 billion loan to fight the malaria scourge.
The World Bank announcement yesterday, came barely a week after the Senate accused the Executive arm of government of resorting to “recklessness borrowing from foreign institutions.”
Ruhl said the request was made by Nigeria at the just concluded Spring meeting in the United States of America (USA).
He said the World Bank was well disposed to the request because malaria accounts for the death of three million children yearly.
The board of the bank will soon meet to consider the request as Nigeria reportedly spends N12 billion yearly to fight the disease.
The Debt Management Office (DMO) recently put Nigeria’s foreign debt at $3.7 billion, in the proportion of 40 per cent indebtedness by the 36 states while the Federal Government accounts for 60 per cent.
Apparently fearing that the fresh borrowing could return Nigeria to the Paris and London Clubs debt trap, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Local and Foreign Debts, Mr. Ehigie Uzamere, when he led his members to DMO on an oversight, said the Executive had not been complying with the provisions of DMO Act 2003 in contracting new loans.
But the World Bank official said the fresh loan being sought by Nigeria, would be under the concessionary window of the institution in the form of additional funding for the Roll Back Malaria project in seven states in which each household would be provided with two mosquito bed nets.
Ruhl’s statement is also seen as lead to claims that the Federal Government had initiated discussions on a loan from the World Bank to plug the deficit in revenue as falling oil earnings eat into its finances.
Guardian Newspapers, Lagos
