Director General, Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC), Dr. Jobson Ewalefor is relentlessly sensitising committed investors to key in accelerating Infrastructure development in the country.
The DG, Ewalefor who has been passionate in reaching out to investors within and outside the country to close the nation’s worrisome Infrastructure deficit through Public Private Partnership (PPP), promised magnifying return for their investment.
While speaking as a panelist at a forum marking the 30th Anniversary of the Nigeria Economic Submit Group (NESG) in Abuja on Tuesday, the DG assured of robust investment environment being created by the government.
Ewalefor stated “the only way we can bridge the Infrastructure gap we have in Nigerian presently, with the present circumstance, is to harness private sector finance”
” It is not just to build Infrastructure that we need, but optimise even the current ones that we have, for improved service delivery”.
“In ICRC, what we have done, is to streamlined our processes to ensure projects are delivered on time and we have modalities and option of Private Public Partnership (PPP), where investors can come in not only to build, but to maintain, to improve, to sustain and optimise service delivery”.
The Director General reiterated that ICRC has set up mechanism to address the concern of investors, ranging from, respect for contract terms and agreement, need to mitigate investors’ unsolicited risk, to activate political will that protect investor’s interest and margin of profit within the legal framework guiding global investment.
Mr Oyebode Oyetunde, Executive Director, African Development Bank (AfDB) also a panelist, decried the absence of discipline and trust culture among Nigerian investors, which has continue to hunt them from accessing robust benefit from institutional investors, particularly, African Development Bank.
An AfDB board member, Mr Oyetunde lamented the self exclusion of Nigerian investors from a stagaring Ten billion dollars development fund, spent on Lighting and Powering Africa within the last seven years.
Mr Dele Sotumbo, Executive Officer of Stanbic IBTC Capital Limited also a panelist, called for a stronger transparency and confidence building in local and foreign investors by government as fund mobiliser, who should domicile the management of the fund in the hands of a consortium of private investors as custodian and fund managers to achieve the required transparency, the pre – condition to access private investors’ fund.
