Adeosun Mounts ECOWAS Investment Bank Chair
BY COBHAM NSA, ABUJA – The Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun will preside over the Board of Governors, Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Bank for Investment and Development (EBID) as the new Chairperson for the next one year.
She assumed the chairmanship position at the 15th Ordinary Meeting of EBID’s Board of Governors which rounded up on Tuesday in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city.
The Board of Governors is the highest decision-making body of EBID with broad powers regarding control, management, operations and administration of the Bank.
Declared open by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, the Board meeting had in attendance all the 15-member ECOWAS countries’ Ministers of Finance designated as its substantive Board members.
Mrs Adeosun, who takes over the leadership mantle from her Republic of Niger counterpart, Hassoumi Massoudou, however urged member countries to be committed and continuously work hard to promote regional integration and inclusive development within the sub-region region.
Established and fully operational in 2003, the EBID Group is a financial institution set up by the 15 Member ECOWAS states comprising Benin, Burkina Faso, Capo Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo.
With its headquarters in Lome, the Togolese capital, EBID has two funding windows namely: Promotion of the private sector and development of the public sector. Its overall objectives are to engender economic development in West Africa through huge projects and programmes financing, particularly in transport, industry, poverty alleviation, the environment, natural resources, energy and telecommunications sectors
Interestingly, it was at the behest of the Authority of Heads of State and Government that the EBID came into existence. At its twenty-second session held on December 9 and 10, 1999, the body decided to transform the ECOWAS Fund into a regional holding company called; EBID with two specialised subsidiaries. These were: the ECOWAS Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and ECOWAS Regional Investment Bank (ERIB), both conceived as major platforms for enhancing EBID’s financial resources by opening of its capital to non-regional partners.
However, the Authority of Heads of States and Government on June 14, 2006, decided to reorganize the Bank into a single unified entity as part of measures to streamline overhead costs. With this position, successive institutional and strategic reforms have been focused on effectively accomplishing EBID’s objectives and mission as designed by the ECOWAS authorities.
