The Vice President of Nigera, Yemi Osinbajo says the only way the only way to effectively tackle the massive infrastructure deficit in Nigeria is by Public-Private Partnership, PPP, arrangement.
According to Laolu Akande, the spokesman to the Vice President, he disclosed that Mr Osibanjo spoke extensively on the need for Public-Private Partnership set up during the opening ceremony of a 2-day retreat of the National Council on Privatisation, NCP.
The retreat will, just to name a few points, deliberate on the proposed amendment of the Public Enterprises (Privatisation and Commercialisation) Act, 1999.
The vice president said Nigeria needs at least 2.3 trillion dollars over the next 30 years to bridge the infrastructural gap.
“The review of budgetary allocation for capital expenditure even over the past decade will show that government resources are completely insufficient for this purpose.
“While government can take either commercial or concessionary loans for infrastructure development, this is an additional burden on a usually considerably leveraged balance sheet.”
He stated there was a huge pool of investable funds from both local and nternational investors the development and maintenance of infrastructure.
However, the funds were only accessible where there was a business case to be made for developing public infrastructure.
“So, for both institutional and individual investors, there is far more comfort with lending or with equity participation where a private sector entity partners with a public authority owner of the infrastructure.
“This way the public partner can play its natural role of a regulator (regulation and policy), leaving business to the private sector whose reason for being is business; so, for investors, PPP presents the best of both worlds,” he said.
He urged participants who were from the private and public sectors at the retreat to remain focused on the objectives of the meeting,
According to him, developing a structure that will be appealing to the investors should be high priority in their deliberations.
Dignitaries at the opening session included the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Otunba Niyi Adebayo and the Senate Committee Chairman on Privatisation, Sen. Theodore Orji.
Representatives of the office of the Attorney General of the Federation, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), NCP, among others were also at the event.
