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The World Bank says it is now considering a request from the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA) for $65 million to support its activities, an official of the bank has said. Since February 2011, officials of GYEEDA, formerly the National Youth and Employment Programme (NYEP), have trumpeted that the World Bank will give $65 million to Ghana through GYEEDA for training, but the bank denied that assertion, stating that �the World Bank is only now evaluating the possibility of support�. The former Executive Director of GYEEDA, Mr Abuga Pele, has been announcing the support on different platforms since February, 2011. A communications specialist at the World Bank, Mr Kofi Tsikata, however, told the Daily Graphic that the claim was not entirely accurate, since the bank was now considering any form of support. A source close to a five-member committee set up by the Ministry of Youth and Sports in April this year to investigate the operations of GYEEDA had told the Daily Graphic that even before the World Bank had considered the request for support, the management of GYEEDA had paid GH�2.5 million to the consultant who had been contracted to facilitate the support from the bank. But Mr Tsikata indicated that the bank dealt with the applicants or prospective beneficiaries of its grants or loans directly and did not engage consultants or facilitators in that regard. Reacting to the allegation in an interview, Mr Pele said a consultant was engaged to pre-finance the exercise of gathering information on the resource potential of the districts and carrying out feasibility studies on the possibility of establishing the youth enterprise, which led to a proposal to access the World Bank facility. Debunking the allegation of paying GH�2.5 million to a consultant, he explained that the consultant was contracted by GYEEDA, not the World Bank, to also develop the non-payment models of the programme in order to prepare an appropriate exit plan for the beneficiaries under that model. �It is never true that we paid a consultant that kind of money, even though the consultant pre-financed the project, after which he was reimbursed,� he said. Elaborating on the payments, he said the consultant was paid GH�826,000 for feasibility studies for the development of non-payroll models which were to see to the creation of exit plans and a further GH�451,000 for the development of a youth enterprise programme and the establishment of an office of resource mobilisation and development. Mr Pele, however, maintained that GYEEDA had not received any money from the World Bank, explaining that the bank was evaluating the possibility of supporting training programmes of GYEEDA but the plans had not been conclusive.