WITH a view to addressing the huge infrastructure deficit in the country, the World Bank has completed plans to provide $200 million as a seed fund, to set up a Financial Intermediary Loan (FIL) scheme under the public private partnership (PPP) initiative.

Head, Legal and Governance, Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC), Mr Joe Ohiani, who disclosed this at the inaugural project finance summit, in Lagos on Monday, said some other development finance organisations had also agreed to contribute to the scheme, adding that eligible participating financial intermediaries, particularly commercial banks with Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) as the lead, would administer the scheme for qualifying private sector partners.

He said in selecting eligible projects, priority would be given to public investment programmes, which were in consonance with the national policy on PPP and captured in the medium term sector strategies and the national infrastructure plan of the Vision 20:2020 of the Federal Government.

In a paper entitled “Governmental Promotion of Infrastructure Development,” Ohiani bemoaned the deplorable state of infrastructure in the continent, as revealed by a recent report of the World Economic Forum, adding that the annual infrastructure investment gap of $31 billion offered huge opportunities for private sector finance in infrastructure development in Africa.

On the state of infrastructure in the country, the ICRC general counsel regretted that the Federal Government had been the sole financier of infrastructure projects and had often taken responsibility for construction, operations and maintenance.

He disclosed that between 1999 and 2007, Nigerian government, through direct budgetary allocation, spent about N2 trillion on such basic infrastructure, warning that declining financial resources was making this option less feasible.

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