FG says public financing of infrastructure will gulp N26.9trn in 5 years

The public financing of infrastructure will gulp $145 billion (N26.9 trillion) in the next five years, Nurudeen Lawal, the acting director, infrastructure department of the National Planning Commission, has said.
Lawal said this while presenting the overview of the National Integrated Infrastructure Master Plan (NIIMP) at the media workshop on Strategic and Sustainable Promotion/Marketing of the NIIMP on Thursday in Abuja.
The workshop was organised by the National Planning Commission, in collaboration with the Infrastructure Bank Plc.
According to him, up to $145 billion is expected to be available for public financing of infrastructure during the first phase of implementation of NIIMP for five years.
“A sum of $31 billion is being expected from annual budgets of both federal and state governments while $76 billion is being expected from public debt.
“Other sources such as pension are expected to finance the infrastructure with $13 billion and $25 billion is being expected from public private partnership (PPP),” Lawal said.
He said the fund would be expended on the prioritised projects such as energy, transport and other sectors across the six geo-political zones.
Lawal said the public sector was expected to contribute 52 percent investments while the private sector would commit 48 percent investments to infrastructure development to realise the NIIMP objectives.
He said the commission established an Infrastructure Delivery Coordinating Unit (IDCU) to coordinate the implementation of the NIIMP.
Lawal expressed the commission’s support for the creation of IDCU in the federal ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) and states, to ensure effective coordination of the NIIMP implementation.
David Adeosun, the head of IDCU in the commission, said the IDCU was to collect, collate and process data on NIIMP execution as well as monitor and evaluate the plan.
Adeosun said the IDCU was also saddled with the responsibility of programme management and development. (NAN)