The Board of Directors of the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development (EBID) has approved 68,105,350.42 million dollars for the funding of public and private sector projects.

An official statement issued in Accra and copied the GNA said the approval was given during its 75th Meeting held in Lomé, Togolese Republic.

The President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of EBID, Dr. George Agyekum Donkor, reiterated that the funding, which further heightens the Bank’s commitment to achieve the objectives of its Strategy 2021-2025, would address infrastructure gaps in key sectors such as health, industry, agribusiness, and trade, in four member states of ECOWAS.

The beneficiary countries are Togo, Cote D’ivoirie, Ghana and Senegal.

Among the projects approved was the construction of a 60-bed specialized state of the art medical referral facility valued at 12,157,000 dollars at Camp General Gnassingbe Eyadema in Togo.

This will ensure world-class healthcare delivery and access to quality health care services in addition to the creation of an estimated 435 jobs among other benefits.

In Issia, Côte d’Ivoire, the Board approved the construction of a semi-industrial processing plant (crushing plant and washing line) to the tune of 8,296,411.36 million dollars, which is intended to exploit and
add value to the Coltan mining potential.

There was a further approval of two lines of credit to the Universal Merchant Bank Limited (UMB) based in Accra, Ghana, for the sum of 30,000,000 million dollars and “Banque Nationale pour le Développement Economique (BNDE)” in the Republic of Senegal, for the sum of seventeen million, six hundred and fifty-one thousand, nine hundred and thirty-nine united states dollars, and six cents (US$17,651,939.06) respectively.

The approved credit lines will provide the respective Banks with stable resources to improve the coverage rate of their long and medium-term commitments with specific reference to SMEs/SMIs and effectively enhance their intervention capacities.

The focus will be the funding of activities related to the development and promotion of SMEs/SMIs through the provision of financing for processing and industrialization in the agribusiness, health, services, and infrastructure sectors.

The Board also gave approval for a twenty-million-united states dollar (US$20,000,000.00) line of credit, which will be made available to companies in the ECOWAS sub-region to source goods and services from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) or UAE related companies to boost commence and trade.