The ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development (EBID) Board of Directors has granted a total of $250 million to five member states—Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Senegal, and Sierra Leone—to improve their agricultural, energy, and transportation infrastructure.
The approvals, according to a statement released by the bank on Thursday, are a part of EBID’s increased efforts to invest in crucial sectors to accelerate the post-COVID pandemic recovery and lessen the effects of the Russian-Ukrainian war on the Economic Community of West African States.
According to the release, the announcement was made during the recently concluded 79th session of the Board of Directors of the Bank by Dr. George Agyekum Donkor, President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of EBID.
Donkor said that many economies were in ruins as a result of the COVID epidemic and the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict. He said that because of the present market conditions, investors are being forced to pay more for projects in sub-Saharan Africa, raising the cost of capital.
Additionally, he stated that this has led to muted economic growth, wide-spread balance of payments deficits, unfavourable terms of trade, the depletion of the central bank’s foreign reserves, fiscal deficits, and debt distress. He emphasised the necessity for EBID, the financial arm of ECOWAS, to strengthen its financial intermediation in all of the member states’ crucial sectors in order to help them overcome these difficulties.
The Vice-President of the ECOWAS Commission, Her Excellency Damtien L. Tchintchibidja, attended the meeting and praised the enormous impact of EBID’s interventions in the sub-region. She also gave the Bank assurances that the new ECOWAS Commission administration would work with EBID and support it in its many endeavours, particularly in the area of resource mobilisation to transform the ECOWAS Communities.
Owned by the 15 ECOWAS member states of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo, ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development (EBID) is a significant regional investment and development institution.
The Lomé-based bank is dedicated to funding programs and projects that address a variety of initiatives in the infrastructure and basic utilities, rural development and environment, industrial, and social services sectors through its windows in the private and governmental sectors.
