Yemisi Izuora
The African Development Bank (AfDB) is considering raising its investment profile in Nigeria by $4.1 billion between 2016 and 2017 and up to $10 billion by 2019.
The Bank’s President, Dr Akinwumi Adesina,made the disclosure to journalists after meeting with Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and the Economic Management Team.
Adesina said that the bank would support the Federal Government in its budget to enable it deal with the current economic challenges.
“We will support Nigerian government with the budget support to be able to deal with some of the domestic fiscal imbalance that they have. “We are looking to consider for the board $1 billion to help them to deal with that particular deficit that is there.
“In addition to that, there are other challenges that the economy has which is in terms diversifying and deepening the level of diversification in critical sectors. “So agriculture, solid minerals very important; manufacturing as well as industrial sector is very important.
“So the bank will provide in total between 2016 and 2017 a total of $4.1 billion to Nigeria in various areas of power, infrastructure to agriculture and the private sector for SME financing and lending.
“I expect that our portfolio in Nigeria will not decrease; it will actually grow.
“We expect to invest in Nigeria by 2019 a total of $10 billion in terms of our portfolio.’’
Adesina said Nigeria is the bank’s biggest shareholder adding that the bank came to talk with the administration on the challenges and opportunities which abound in the country.
He said the times were difficult in Nigeria but commended the federal government for taking bold decisions in a number of things such as economic diversification.
He said the low crude oil price was a big challenge adding that 98 per cent of the nation’s foreign revenue came from that sector thus creating a lot of reverberations. He said it was necessary to device means of stemming the difficulties adding that the bank would support the country in that regard.
According to him, there is the need to deepen the diversification and making sure there is micro economic and fiscal stability in the country and to have synergy between the micro, monetary and fiscal sides.
“We also recognize that power is perhaps the most important challenge that is driving inflation in the country. “We expect from our portfolio this year to invest in over 1,400 megawatts of projects that are going to be focused on the energy sector. “By 2017 we plan to invest in about 1,387 megawatts of generation projects for the sector,’’ he said.
Adesina added that the discussion also dwelt on investment on women, youth and job creation as well as opportunities to support access to finance by banks. Accordingly, he said AfDB will support the development bank of Nigeria with $500 million to help in cheap financing of the country’s real sector.
He said AfDB would also provide $100 million support to the Bank of Industry for lending to Small and Medium Enterprises and finance the Bank of Agriculture to carry out reforms and obtain financing. The AfDB president said the country support was on a concessionary interest rate of 1.2 per cent.
The Minister of finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, said that government had indicated earlier that it would go for the cheapest money (loans) first which was why it approached the AfDB and the World Bank.
“We have stuck to that strategy and we have very conservative debt profile. “That is a great flexibility on the comfort of the country and we have not over-borrowed. “What we have to do and what we are doing is to make sure that this money we borrowed is used on key infrastructure that will drive the economy. “And I am going to assure you all those things,’’ the minister added.