No fewer than three million poor and vulnerable households have benefitted from the $800m palliative loan disbursed by the World Bank to cushion the effect of recent government policies, such as the fuel subsidy removal.
Of these beneficiaries, 700 thousand households were from rural areas and about 2.5 million households were from urban areas.
The World Bank revealed this in its restructuring paper on how to bolster its social safety net programmes amidst rising inflation and economic challenges.
This was as the Federal Government submitted a request to extend the period of the closing date by 18 months from June 30, 2024, to December 31, 2025.
According to the document obtained from its website on Wednesday, the extension seeks to realign project timelines and enhance the efficacy of the National Social Safety Net Program-Scale Up, adding that 1,652 urban wards had been covered through the targeting system developed under the project.
