Director-General,
Bureau of
Public Enterprises (BPE),
Mrs Irene Chigbue, has said to achieve the desired economic growth rate,
Nigeria needs to invest about $18 billion annually on
New infrastructure.
Chigbue stated this in
New York recently, in a
Paper entitled “Rebuilding Infrastruc-ture in
Nigeria ,” at THIS-DAY’s “Nigeria Meets the World Summit.”
She said given the dire need for massive
Investment in infrastructure,
Government has embarked on extensive infrastructure sectoral reforms and institution of legal/regulatory and administrative frameworks conducive to Policy Support Instrument for both existing facilities and
New Investments .
According to her, the strategy for enhanced infrastructure
Development in
Nigeria presents enormous
Investment opportunities for would be
Investors . He added that the
Investment friendly initiatives put in place by
Government include that: “foreigners can own 100 per cent of
Investment ; guarantee against expropriation of
Investments ; repatriation of profits guaranteed by
Law; generous tax incentives; one of the highest Return on Invest-ment (ROI) in the world; huge
Local market (population of 140million);
Access to the
West African sub-regional market; and cheap but skilled labour.
With past efforts to improve infrastructure like commercialisation and
Management contracts having metwith
Limited success due to policy inconsistencies and uneconomic tariff regime, the BPE boss said thatgovernment had to embrace reform and privatisation ofinfrastructure.The
General features of the
New policy include:“Adoption of deregulation and liberalisationpolicies;Enactment of investor friendly legalframeworks; Restructuring and unbundling of statemonopolies; Establishment of independent regulators;Redefinition of roles of
All stakeholders; and Cedingof
Commercial operations to private
Investors .Chigbue noted that the Privatisation Act of 1999 andthe Infrastructure Regulatory Commission Act (IRCA)2005
Are giving verve to the restructuring andconcession programme. She added that the PrivatizationAct provides for privatization of existinginfrastructure, viz, airports, seaports, NITEL,electric
Power among others.According to her, “the
National council onPrivatization (NCP) has flexibility under the Act todetermine mode of privatization ranging from strategiccore investor
Sales , concession,
Management contract,etc. Thus far, NCP has used mostly concession forseaports and airports.”The BPE Director
General explained that theInfrastructure Regulatory Commission Act (IRCA) dealswith
New infrastructure
Development and provides for participation of private
Sector indevelopment of infrastructure.According to Chigbue, the IRCA also authorizesgovernment
Agencies /ministries involved in financing,construction, operation and maintenance ofinfrastructure to enter into contract/grant concessionwith private entity operator. It also establishes anInfrastructure Concession and Regulatory Commission(ICRC) to make ground rules and regulations for PPPinitiatives and establishes a
Board and
Fund for ICRC.
