Poor coordination on the side of government agencies packaging the deals, unbankability of the projects in view and lack of credible insurance cover have been identified by the Managing Director of The Infrastructure Bank (TIB), Mr. Adekunle Oyinloye, as the reasons for early collapse of several Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) arrangements.
Speaking in Abuja at the Public-Private Dialogue on Infrastructure Financing in Nigeria, he noted that there is need for better coordination of policies among different agencies of government in order to make PPPs bankable and attractive to well capitalized insurance companies.
The stakeholders’ forum was put together by the Ministry of Budget and National Planning in collaboration with the Nigeria Infrastructure Public Private Partnership Summit Group.
According to the TIB boss, many policies and agencies of government that handle PPP projects were not effectively coordinated, thereby giving room for investors to back out at the slightest frustration.
He noted that agencies in charge of PPP as well as PPP policies should be streamlined to give the nation a focus on what is being done at every point in time so as to enable investors to know what to do with their investments.
It would be recalled that the federal government had been working to rake in about $80bn through the National Integrated Infrastructure Master Plan as direct private investment in infrastructure between 2014 and 2018.
During the discourse, the Director of Infrastructure in the ministry, Mr. Nurudeen Lawal, stated, “Government is also expected to leverage up to $25bn for infrastructure through public-private partnerships during the same period”.
But, Oyinloye argued that “Achieving these investment targets will require properly designed and well-managed private sector engagement.”