Benin gets €39m loan from AfDB to boost private sector’s contribution to economic development
The Board of Directors of the African Development Fund, the African Development Bank Group’s concessional window, approved a €38.84 million loan to Benin to help implement the initial phase of the Economic Governance and Private Sector Development Support Program, Abidjan-based lender said in a statement.
The program designed to assist the Beninese government in its efforts to accelerate, develop and implement the structural reforms will increase the private sector’s contribution to economic growth by enhancing the overall business climate, developing the agri-food sector, and strengthening climate action.
“It will help to ease the bottlenecks to private sector development, particularly those relating to the business climate and support for the growth industries of the Beninese economy, especially the agricultural and agro-industrial sectors,” Robert Masumbuko, the Bank’s Country Manager for Benin also added.
AfDB also argued that the program provides for the establishment of a technical committee to finalize the National E-commerce Strategy, which will define the regulatory framework for online commerce and facilitate financial transactions.
In addition, the program will also result in an update of the communication plan for the National Gender Strategy for the agricultural sector, drafted in July 2021, with an action plan for the period 2022-2026.
The West African country also expects the paperless program to remove obstacles to trade and reduce the time required to obtain the necessary investment licenses and authorizations.
The initiative will be deployed in full swing in 2024 and will help the country achieve a set of results including increasing private investment to 30.2 % of GDP in 2024, versus 29.9 % in 2022, and reducing the time taken to pay government debts to micro, small and medium-sized enterprises from 200 days in 2021 to 60 days from 2024 onwards. AfDB also indicated that the program will also make it possible to increase the added value of the agri-food industries, the contribution of which to GDP will rise from 6.1 % in 2022 to 6.4 % in 2024.
In the farming sector, the lender also added, the initiative will increase the level of gender mainstreaming from 10 % in 2022 to 15 % in 2024.
