According to Mr. Lamin Barrow, Director-General of the African Development Bank’s Nigeria Country Department, 32% of flagged project operations meant to be financed by the bank failed to meet loan effectiveness and first disbursement conditions as of December 2021.
On Thursday, he stated this at the 2022 Country Portfolio Performance Review Workshop in Abuja.
“Despite the progress made in the last year, we need to move quickly to ensure that the new projects reach the implementation stage at a faster pace,” Barrow said.
“Admittedly, start-up delays accounted for 32% of flagged operations as of the end of December 2021, owing to delays in meeting loan effectiveness and first disbursement conditions.” There are low-hanging fruits that we can harvest by expediting the signature of four public-sector projects approved in 2021.”
However, he claims that there have been some increases in the pace of project implementation since 2019.
“Despite the difficult operating environment, there have been some modest gains since the last CPPR.” For example, the cumulative disbursement rate increased from 57% in 2019 to 66% in 2021, indicating that the pace of project implementation has accelerated in 2021.
Barrow also stated that the rate of flagged operations had decreased from 32% in October 2021 to 25% in December 2021.
“Over the same time period, the portfolio performance rating has remained satisfactory at around 3 on a scale of 1 to 4. “Fiduciary compliance is also improving, with the Executing/Implementing Agencies submitting audited financial statements at a higher rate,” he said.
“Thanks to improved coordination with the Ministry of Finance, Budget, and National Planning, as well as concerted actions taken during the last quarter of 2021, the operations flagged for implementation challenges decreased from a high of 32% in October 2021 to 25% in December 2021,” he said.
However, we must not give up on our efforts to reduce flagged operations and slay the dragon of slow implementation.”
“Delayed project implementation imposes a high burden on the economy and ultimately undermines our objectives to deliver development outcomes,” he added. As a result, we must strengthen our accountability mechanisms, which must be backed up by robust tracking tools to monitor implementation progress.”
Barrow also revealed that AfDB has 63 operations in Nigeria worth $5 billion in its portfolio.
