By; FUNMI ADERINTO, Kaduna
The Commissioner, Planning and Budget Commission, Hajiya Umma Yusuf Aboki has assured that the Kaduna State Government is ever committed to boosting businesses with available grants and enabling their digital capacities.
It would be recalled that she delivered a Keynote Address at the KD-CARES Area 3 Launch in December 2022.
However, the Kaduna State Enterprise Development Agency (KADEDA) has provided the first batch of the beneficiaries of the Result Area 3 (RA3) component of the COVID-19 Action Recovery and Economic Stimulus Programme (KADUNA-CARES) with Credit Grant and ICT Grant, worth over one Hundred and Ten million Naira (N110,000,000.00).
The Nigeria-CARES Programme is a World Bank-sponsored intervention that seeks to mitigate the local effects of the COVID-19 pandemic at the state-level, by protecting the livelihoods of existing and newly poor and vulnerable households and supporting the recovery of local economic activity, especially among MSMEs.
In Kaduna, Kaduna CARES RA3 is targeted at MSMEs in the formal and informal sectors involved in commercial activities within the state and is being implemented by KADEDA.
It is hoped that the grants will provide relief, facilitate the recovery and enhance the capacity and capabilities of local MSMEs through this support designed to reduce their vulnerability and cushion the effects of income-loss brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and its resultant disruption to regular commercial activity.
Also, giving an overview of the agency and the project, the Managing Director of KADEDA, Dr. Mustapha Shitu noted that the COVID-19 pandemic and the concurrent shock to global oil prices created an urgent need to mitigate the social and economic impacts of the crisis in Nigeria.
