Nigeria’s dilapidated roads are going to receive attention as Infracorp plans to deploy about N9 trillion from banks and pension funds to three roads, Godwin Emefiele, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) said on Friday.
He disclosed this in Lagos at the signing of a term sheet between Infracorp and the four Asset managers.
The targeted roads he mentioned were Lagos-Ibadan, Abuja-Kaduna/Kano, and the second Niger bridge.
Emefiele who maintained that there is a lot of local capital and liquidity in Nigeria said, “From today we are unveiling InfraCo to Nigeria and because we are sure, we are confident that the funding of N15 trillion is available. We have done our scoping. We believe that a substantial portion of the N15 trillion is available locally. There is a lot of liquidity today not just in the banking industry, there is a lot of liquidity that is currently held by our pension funds managers.”
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On pensions, he said Nigeria is making significant progress and the funds there will increase in years to come.
“I understand from the last count that the size of Nigeria’s pension fund is over N13 trillion. I am told that in another three to five years Nigerian pension assets will rise to almost N20 to N25 trillion. In other countries where infrastructure corporations have worked, pension funds have been used to develop infrastructure of those countries,” Emefiele said.
“What we are trying to say here is this that there is a lot of local capital and liquidity in Nigeria and that we would like to say that you would begin by talking to people, the institutions that have this liquidity to come in and take up this kind of debt and that is why I am trying to say that out of the N14 trillion that will be the debt we imagine that on looking at it on a straight line we should be looking at N5 trillion but almost close to about N8- N9 trillion available say within the Nigerian banking industry and the attention of other instruments. And of course, naturally, the rest will be raised through foreign debt, talking about Eurobond and the rest of them.
“We are moving very quickly, very fast. We will be looking at more in Nigeria.”
