Infrastructure Gap: Nigeria Needs to Invest $100bn Per Annum for six Years — BPE

• Infrastructure Gap: Nigeria Needs to Invest $100bn Per Annum for six Years — BPE

Nigeria needs to invest $100bn per annum for the next six years in order to achieve optimum result in closing infrastructure gaps across the country, the Bureau of Public Enterprises has said.

The Director-General of BPE, Mr Alex Okoh, said this when he received a delegation from the World Bank led by Senior Economist (Economics and Private Sector Development), Mr Volker Treichel, according to a statement made available to our correspondent in Abuja on Wednesday by Head of Public Communications at BPE, Amina Othman.

Okoh, who was represented by Director, Infrastructure and Public Private Partnership Department, Mallam Sanusi Sule, said that the next phase of the Reform and Privatisation Programme of the Federal Government would focus on Public Private Partnerships with the view closing infrastructural gaps in the country.

He said that the new phase targeted reforms mostly in the utility and infrastructure sectors including water resources, railways, airports and highways.

The BPE noted that the country’s infrastructure gap was huge as it was estimated that Nigeria needed to invest more than $3tn in the next 30 years to bridge the gap.

For the next six years, he added, Nigeria needs to invest an average of $100bn per annum.

He stated that the need for refocusing on PPP was borne out of increasing budgetary constraints to fund the development of new infrastructure and effectively maintain existing ones, deteriorating infrastructure (dilapidated roads, schools, hospitals etc.), higher public expectations in terms of efficiency and effectiveness of infrastructure service delivery.