Infrastructure: World Bank to provide $200m loan to Nigeria

WITH a view to addressing the huge infrastructure
deficit in the country, the World Bank has completed
plans to provide $200 million as a seed fund, to set
up a Financial Intermediary Loan (FIL) scheme under
the public private partnership (PPP) initiative.
Head, Legal and Governance, Infrastructure
Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC), Mr Joe
Ohiani, who disclosed this at the inaugural project
finance summit, in Lagos on Monday, said some
other development finance organisations had also
agreed to contribute to the scheme, adding that
eligible participating financial intermediaries,
particularly commercial banks with Africa Finance
Corporation (AFC) as the lead, would administer the
scheme for qualifying private sector partners.
He said in selecting eligible projects, priority would
be given to public investment programmes, which
were in consonance with the national policy on PPP
and captured in the medium term sector strategies
and the national infrastructure plan of the Vision
20:2020 of the Federal Government.
In a paper entitled "Governmental Promotion of
Infrastructure Development," Ohiani bemoaned the
deplorable state of infrastructure in the continent, as
revealed by a recent report of the World Economic
Forum, adding that the annual infrastructure
investment gap of $31 billion offered huge
opportunities for private sector finance in
infrastructure development in Africa.
On the state of infrastructure in the country, the ICRC
general counsel regretted that the Federal
Government had been the sole financier of
infrastructure projects and had often taken
responsibility for construction, operations and
maintenance.
He disclosed that between 1999 and 2007, Nigerian
government, through direct budgetary allocation,
spent about N2 trillion on such basic infrastructure,
warning that declining financial resources was
making this option less feasible.