FG needs $166bn to bridge infrastructure gap in Nigeria – Perm Sec
The Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Budget and National Planning, Mr. Leon Lawrence Aliboh, has said that the Federal Government requires a huge funding of over $166 billion to bridge infrastructure deficit in the country during the period 2014 – 2018.
Aliboh disclosed this at the ‘Public-Private Dialogue on Infrastructure Delivery’ organized by the Ministry of Budget and National Planning in Abuja on Thursday, September 14, 2017.
The Permanent Secretary was represented by Director Infrastructure Department in the Ministry, Barrister Nurudeen Lawal.
He explained that capital expenditure accounted for about 30 percent of the 2016 Federal Government budget and over N1.6 trillion was released largely for infrastructure projects spread across the country.
He further maintained that the tempo of increased infrastructure expenditure is being sustained in the 2017 Federal Government budget. However, current fiscal realities, occasioned by developments in the local and global environment, have seriously constrained government capacity to meet the required infrastructure for socio-economic development.
Accordingly, Aliboh noted, the Public-Private Dialogue on Infrastructure Delivery, is in line with the current administration’s priority of building a competitive economy by increasing public investment and improving the business environment for more private sector investments in infrastructure development, adding that it is also consistent with the broad objective of the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (2017-2020).
In his remarks, the Acting Director General, Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC), Engineer Chidi Izuwa, urged Nigeria to copy how other countries got it right with infrastructure development and add the Nigerian swagger to make it work well.
Izuwa revealed that Nigeria would soon launch the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) portal which, according to him, will be the first in the world.
The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Infrastructure Bank (TIB), Adekunle Oyinloye, said that serious efforts should be made for Nigerians to know about the Nigerian Integrated Infrastructure Master Plan (NIIMP), arguing that it would just be another document dumped if not done so.
He pledged that the TIB is determined to support the Ministry achieve projects from the NIIMP to a bankable level.
