The Bank of Industry (BOI) has 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 an initiative of the bank as claimed.

The BOI stated that the funding system gives each state the freedom to distribute their chosen grant amounts and numbers among the various programme components as determined by the World Bank.

To achieve this, it claimed that the World Bank had only recommended the bank based on its track record of constructing field networks and technological infrastructure for the transparent implementation of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) intervention programs. This infrastructure will be used to deliver the MSME component of NG-CARES (RA3) nationwide.

This nomination was followed by 28 out of 33 States, selecting BOI as their preferred execution partner to utilize the MSME infrastructure of the bank 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.