Vice President Yemi Osinbajo says the only way to effectively address the massive infrastructure deficit in Nigeria is by Public-Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement.
Osinbajo’s spokesman, Laolu Akande, in a statement on Thursday in Abuja, said the vice president spoke at the opening ceremony of a 2-day retreat of the National Council on Privatisation (NCP).
The retreat will, among other things, deliberate on the proposed amendment of the Public Enterprises (Privatisation and Commercialisation) Act, 1999.
The vice president said that Nigeria would require 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 said there was a large pool of investable funds from both local and international investors for the development and maintenance of infrastructure.
Osinbajo said, 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.
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