Experts task FG on PPP to bridge infrastructure deficit

Financial analysts have urged the Federal Government to explore more Public Private Partnership (PPP) model as a panacea for the country’s 1.5 trillion dollars infrastructure deficit in the next 10 years.

The financial analysts said this in separate interviews with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday in Lagos.

A tax consultant, Dr McAntony Dike, said that the involvement of the private sector would change the infrastructural trajectory of the country.

Dike, who is a former President of the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria, said encouraging more big corporates to fix decaying infrastructure and granting them temporary tax relief were quite innovative.

“This tax holiday model to fix infrastructure by corporates is good, because due process is often followed through.

“Transparency is entrenched and the suspicion that trails government infrastructural projects, does not exist here,” he said.

He noted that private sector-led investment to fix infrastructure was the best because the government could not fund them due to more competing demands.

“The Federal Government’s responsibility has surged, due to the times, and there is no serious improvement of its revenue.

“Especially now that the economy is just gradually recovering from the headwinds caused by the pandemic,” Dike said.

Also, the President Progressive Shareholders Association of Nigeria, Mr Boniface Okezie, said that harnessing more of the PPP approach could bridge the infrastructure gap.

“The model over the years has been a vehicle to transform critical infrastructure deficit and economic development.

“Particularly in advanced economies, where they have successfully bridged their infrastructural gap to a reasonable level,” he said.

Okezie noted the Build Operate and Transfer, (BOT) approach was another antidote the government could consider more often to fill the infrastructural gap.

“This model allows the investors to manage the facilities over time and return it to the regulators, after their investment has been recouped.

“Our authorities could harness these approaches to fix key infrastructure that is imperative to the country’s economic growth,” he said.

Okezie said that the Federal Government might also come up to the capital market to raise funds for key infrastructural needs.

NAN reports that President Muhammadu Buhari told world leaders that Nigeria needs at least 1.5 trillion dollars in the next 10 years to close its infrastructure deficit and achieve an appreciable level of the national infrastructure stock.

Buhari said this in Glasgow at a COP 26 high-level side event on improving global infrastructure. (NAN)