Governor Peter Mbah says the objectives of the COVID-19 Action Recovery and Economic Stimulus (NG-CARES) are in tune with his administration’s vision to bring poverty to zero level in Enugu.

Mr Mbah disclosed this during Thursday’s ‘Peer Learning And Experience Event’ organised by the Federal Cares Support Unit of the Federal Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning in Enugu.

NG-CARES is a federal government programme and the World Bank aimed at responding to hardship caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mr Mbah said the government embarked on distributing agricultural inputs, assets and grant worth over N4.6 billion to farmers, communities and ICT start-ups in Enugu.

NG-CARES’s national coordinator, Abdulkarim Obaje, said over nine million Nigerians directly benefited from the programme to alleviate poverty caused by the pandemic.

Mr Obaje noted that the stakeholder states were putting much of their resources into the programmes, adding that the federal government had requested an additional $500 million from the World Bank.

“This additional $500 million proposed is to ensure the sustainability of the programme in the participating states. In spite of various challenges, many state governments have keyed into the programme. The first Independent Verification Assessment (IVA) was N77 billion, the second N135.4 billion, while the third assessment was in excess of N700 billion.

“There is multiple improvement because the state governments understood what the issues were and they were able to fund the programme,” he said.

(NAN)