NAIROBI, April 23 (Reuters) – Ethiopia’s finance ministry signed a $907 million financing agreement with the World Bank on Friday geared towards improving access to financing, the fight against COVID-19 and electricity investment, it said.

Some $700 million was a loan and $207 million a grant, the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry said that $200 million will go towards small and medium businesses affected by the pandemic with the aim of easing their financing challenges.

Another $207 million will be for the deployment of COVID-19 vaccines and the remaining $500 million will be invested in efforts to increase access to electricity in the Horn of Africa nation.

Like other countries around the world, Ethiopia’s economy has been hit hard by the pandemic.

In February, the International Monetary Fund said that Ethiopia’s economic growth is projected to be 2% in 2020/21, largely due to the effects of the coronavirus, but it is expected to rebound to 8.7% in 2021/22 in line with a global recovery.

(Reporting by Nairobi newsroom; Writing by Omar Mohammed; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)