Luka Binniyat
13 October 2008
Abuja — The World Bank has scored Nigeria high on the implementation of a $120 million Sustainable Management of Mineral Resource Project grant extended to the country three years ago for the resuscitation of its Solid Mineral Sector.
The Project is regarded as the largest mining intervention programme of the World Bank, not only in Africa, but the entire world. The grant has a 30 year repayment period with a 0.75 per cent commission charged on it.
In a mid-term review report of the grant last week Craig Andrews, World Bank Chief in Nigeria, who was leader of the review team and Alexandra Pugachevsky, Operations Officer of the Oil, Gas, Mining and Chemical department of the World Bank said, "the project has made very significant progress towards archiving its development objectives.
This include the on-going airborne geophysical survey of Nigeria, inauguration of the newly rehabilitated Central Ministry office at Wusse II Abuja, continuing rehabilitation work on other zonal offices and the anticipated commencement of geo-chemical mapping studies of Nigeria".
The report added that, "excellent progress has been made on the Nigerian Institute of Mining and Geosciences Jos, Plateau State, commissioning of the mining community outreach center in Jos and a follow-up on various studies of Small scale and artisinal mining sector."
The World Bank mid-term review reports that, the project over the last several months has laid an excellent foundation to deliver technical support to the artisinal and small scale miners presently put at about two million miners.
Andrews then advised Nigeria to take advantage of the rising prices of metals in the international market and go into aggressive exploration of mineral drawing support partly from the resources doled out to the sector by the World Bank.
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