Nigeria calls for private sector capital to bridge infrastructure gap

The Nigerian government on Monday said there was need to embrace private sector capital to bridge the infrastructure gap.

The country was at a stage of reforming the process for Public-Private Partnerships, Kemi Adeosun, Nigeria's Finance Minister said in Abuja, the nation's capital city.

She said the aim was to provide a seamless pathway to attract much needed private finance and operational inputs to service delivery.

According to her, private capital will bring more than financial resources, but also discipline and best practices.

Adeosun said it would also create a benchmark against which the utilization of public money could be measured.

She added that it was important to link the fiscal housekeeping initiatives that the country had for a wider economic strategy.

The minister said questions around the focus on corruption and the elimination of ghost workers, controlling inefficient spending and preventing revenue leakages needed to be evaluated.

She, however, said that this should be in the context of how it impacts on Nigerians' ability to stimulate the economy.

On global commodities' downturn, she said the manner in which governments had intervened to protect their economies had been diverse and innovative.

The minister said what was abundantly clear was the fact that the previous consensus about what was best for the global economy was rapidly changing.

According to her, the country can transit from being a commodity economy to an industrialized and regionally dominant one.

She said that oil was important but clearly not enough citing Iran as recent and relevant example of a country living without oil.

"The focus of our economic policy is to redress the infrastructure deficit, unlock the rich diversity in the economy with a determined and focused turnaround program," she added.

Adeosun said growing the economy at a rate that would address the employment needs of the country's huge population required fundamental change in how the government collected and spent its revenues.

She said the government would ensure fiscal housekeeping aimed at ensuring that borrowed funds were channeled into capital projects rather than having an inefficient financial management system.

Adeosun said this was not only prudent economics, but a moral necessity since those borrowings would be repaid by future generations.

The minister, therefore, said that as the nation focused fully on the macroeconomic indicators, it must and should continue to focus on the micro factors which collectively shaped and determined the larger picture. Endit