Development Financial Institutions have commended the Nigerian Government for its commitment to infrastructure development through Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) and called for more collaboration from the private sector.
They called during Tuesday’s Nigeria Public Private Partnership (PPP) Summit, which the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) played host to in Abuja.
The two-day summit’s theme is “Unlocking Nigeria’s Potential: The Role of Public-Private Partnerships in Delivering the Renewed Hope Agenda.”
Dr Dahlia Khalifa, the Director for Central and Anglophone West Africa at the International Finance Corporation (IFC), commended the Nigerian Government for its commitment to creating a transparent and predictable business environment. Khalifa said the Government was doing this through recent efforts, such as updating PPP guidelines for the ICRC and publishing a transparent project pipeline on its website.
Solomon Quaynor, Vice President for Private Sector, Infrastructure and Industrialisation, AfDB, emphasised the importance of collaboration to address the infrastructure financing gap, estimated at 70 to 110 billion dollars annually across all sectors. Quaynor said that PPPs were complex, long-term contracts that must be designed appropriately to survive different political administrations. He highlighted several PPP projects the bank was carrying out in Nigeria, including the Lagos-Abidjan corridor, Lekki Toll Road, the Metro Rail, the bus rapid transport system in Lagos, and industrial parks across 28 states.
Quaynor said the AfDB and the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority had mobilised about 500 million dollars, equivalent to Naira, to fund infrastructure bonds in Nigeria.
