Oyo State government has started the disbursement of grants and loans to small scale businesses under the World Bank Assisted project codenamed ‘NG Cares/Oyo Cares.
NG-CARES is a World Bank-assisted Federal Government credit project of $750m. It is a two-year intervention project aimed at mitigating the impact of COVID-19 on the poor and vulnerable groups and each state is coordinating the disbursement with the partnership of the Bank of Industry.
The presentation of dummy cheques to the beneficiary business owners was done in Ibadan on Wednesday by the Commissioner for Budget and Planning, Prof. Musbau Babatunde; his finance counterpart, Mr Akinola Ojo; and Director-General, Oyo State Investment Public Private Partnership Agency, Ms Lola Olutola and the Project Manager, Akin Makinde.
Makinde said the beneficiaries were categorised into two, and that 1,708 would benefit under one category while 1,543 would benefit under the second category.
He said the first category of beneficiaries were those who obtained loans during COVID-19 and about 40 per cent of the remainder of their unpaid loan would be defrayed by the Oyo Cares loan.
