Kwara State wins World Bank Transparency and Accountability Award, set to pocket $16.9 million

Kwara State has emerged top in the World Bank-assisted SFTAs award in Nigeria.

 

By

Chidi Emenike

Kwara State Government has won the 2019/2020 World Bank-supported State Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability (SFTAs) award.

This is according to a statement issued by the Press Secretary, Ministry of Finance and Planning, Mrs Saad Hamdalat, as reported by the News Agency of Nigeria. The award comes with a monetary reward of $16.9 million and is the highest ever achieved by the state since the initiative began in 2018.

Mrs Hamdalat noted that the award came after the state satisfied the disbursements linked indicators (DLIs) as contained in the Annual Performance Assessment (APA) final report, submitted by the Independent Verification Agents (IVA) that had earlier visited Kwara State.

What they are saying

Commenting on the recent development, Mrs Hamdalat said: “The DLIs include improved financial reporting and budget reliability, increased citizens engagement in budget process; strengthened Internally Generated Revenues (IGR); biometric and BVN used to reduce payroll fraud, strengthened public debt management, improved debt sustainability and implementation of a tax compliance for individual taxpayers and businesses.

“This will also strengthen procurement function for COVID-19 or emergency situations and facilitate participation of SMEs in public procurement resilient recovery phase and publication and approval of amended COVID-19 response budget.

“The import of the foregoing is that the state is eligible to the total sum of 16.9 million dollars, representing performance-based grant for 2019 APA, with an earlier disbursement of five million dollars in November 2020.

“Of the balance of 11.9 million dollars, the state has received additional 9.4 million dollars on Jan. 4, 2021 and awaits the balance of 2.5 million dollars later in the month.’’

What you should know: The SFTAS program supported by the government focuses on strengthening the fiscal sustainability, transparency and accountability of Nigerian states. The program consists of; The Fiscal Sustainability Plan (FSP) actions to be implemented by state governments; and The Nigerian OGP National Action Plan (NAP) actions at the state-level.