Share
New Delhi: The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors approved a US$200 million loan today to support China’s Hunan Province in delivering more equitable and efficient public services in rural areas.
While China’s growth has helped eliminate extreme poverty, it has been accompanied by widening disparities between coastal and interior provinces and between rural and urban areas. Imbalances in inter-governmental fiscal relations have led to excessive debt accumulation, inequitable service delivery and low spending efficiency, which has been exacerbated by the impact of COVID-19.
“Our support to China is increasingly selective, with a focus on closing remaining institutional gaps and contributing to global public goods. Reforms of China’s subnational finances are important to reduce regional disparities, improve public service delivery in poorer parts of the country and contain the unsustainable accumulation of debt,” said Martin Raiser, World Bank Country Direct
Supporting Improved Fiscal Management and Rural Public Services in Hunan Province miragenews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from miragenews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
In Nigeria, banking is about to get open
Last week, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) released draft regulations for the open banking framework in Nigeria. It’s in line with the prediction by Stears Business that conversations around open banking regulations would move forward in Nigeria in 2021. What’s all the fuss about? Open banking, often described as the future of banking, is the idea that traditional banks should share the transaction data of customers with fintechs, challenger banks and other third parties.
It sounds simple but the implications are far-reaching. With shared transactional data, customers can compare banking services easily and decide between banks. Importantly, it could allow fintechs to really compete with banks by taking all of that information and using it to create unique solutions that meet customer needs.
More Nigerians will be trapped in poverty because of increasing population
Nigeria’s uncontrolled population is becoming worrying as the prospects of poverty reduction in the near future is increasingly becoming a mirage. This was underscored last week at the virtual launch of the 2021 Macroeconomic Outlook of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG). The World Bank said at the forum that about 15 million to 20 million more Nigerians would be tipped into poverty by 2022. At present, about 100 million people, half the population of Africa’s biggest economy, are already living below the poverty line.
World Bank Senior Economist, Gloria Joseph-Raji, said that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Nigerian economy was hard. Indeed, the country experienced its second and deepest recession in five years since the 1980s in 2020, evidently a fallout of the catastrophic drop in the prices of oil, the country’s main foreign exchange earner. “We consider Nigeria right now to be at a