Nigeria requires the injection of $113bn to fix three critical sectors necessary to put the economy of the nation on a sound pedestal, the Bureau of Public Enterprises has said.
The Director-General of the agency, Mr. Benjamin Dikki, said this in a paper he delivered at a forum by the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria.
A statement made available to our correspondent by the Head of Public Communications, Mr. Chigbo Anichebe, in Abuja on Thursday, quoted Dikki as saying Nigeria required the amount in six years for the development of three critical sectors of the economy, namely: oil and gas, power and transport.
According to him, to modernise the Nigerian transport system, investments of about $33bn will be required in six years for road and rail development; to undertake the rehabilitation and modernisation of the Nigerian railway and the construction of new road networks across the country.
He also indicated that in the next six years, Nigeria would require between $18bn and $20bn of investment in the power sector.
The BPE DG also claimed that the current reforms in the sector had enabled the private sector to invest in the rehabilitation of existing infrastructure and in new projects.
Dikki noted that in the next six years, Nigeria would require about $60bn in investments in the oil and gas industry to unleash the potential in the sector.
The BPE boss said government was not in a position to finance all the investment requirements; thus the private sector needed to participate in the investment in the various sectors.
He said it was in order to attract the needed private sector investments that the government through the transformation agenda was fine-tuning policies and legal and regulatory frameworks to give confidence to the private sector to invest.
Dikki emphasised that the enactment of the Petroleum Industry Bill and transport bills being midwifed by the BPE would be critical.
He added that without the passage of the bill, the country would continue to lose estimated additional revenue of about $287m in three production sharing contracts every month.
On the impact of reform and privatisation on the nation’s economy, Dikki said the BPE had concluded reforms in eight sectors of the economy, which he listed as telecommunications, power, banking and finance, marine, mining, steel, oil and gas, and industry.
The government, he added, had so far privatised 123 enterprises including the recently concluded sale of Power Holding Company of Nigeria successor companies that yielded over N564.3bn.
Dikki noted that the reform of the telecommunications and banking sectors remained the most successful in terms of their impact on the Nigerian economy.
Copyright Ships & Ports Ltd. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit given to www.shipsandports.com.ng as the source.