The Federal Government could launch a N10 trillion naira infrastructure bond

– Babatunde Fashola on Monday, declared that the federal government could launch a N10 trillion naira infrastructure bond, so as to fund all road projects in the country.

– He reiterated the federal government’s commitment to fixing all the roads in the country. As well as other infrastructural projects in the nation.

The federal government could be considering seeking a legislative approval for a N10 trillion infrastructure bond to fund road projects in the country.

This was disclosed by the Minister of power, works and housing, Babatunde Fashola, on Monday when he appeared before the House of Representatives’ Committee on Works for the 2019 Budget defence in Abuja.

In the words of the former governor: “I would love to see Nigeria launch maybe N10 trillion infrastructure bond, once and for all, with legislative approval, or even more. We can then draw down on that fund, go to the Capital Market year after year to issue bond to support rail, power, roads, bridges, airports, etc, once we have consensus about our national infrastructure.

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“If you look at the list of road projects under management, it is over 500. We can’t reach everybody at the same time but I assure you, it will get to every part of the country, one after the other.

‘‘No matter how passionate, how desirous we feel about doing much more, we must subscribe ourselves to the reality.

‘‘The national budgetary plans are set out by the Budget Ministry and we see it in the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF), which is also submitted to parliament.

‘‘This stipulates how much we can spend, how much we expect to receive unless we want to have unworkable budget by appropriating higher than what our fiscal realities dictate.

‘‘The idea is to advance their taxes to government for infrastructure and use it to build roads. Mr President recently signed an Executive Order to support that.

‘‘And that leads to what we are saying about raising capital. The opportunities for more capital from stock market, private sector into our road funding are not closed, but I want to say also that we must moderate expenditure and reality of those companies,” the minister said.

Fashola concluded by urging the National Assembly to expedite work on the Road Fund Bill, which, he said, the ministry was involved in its drafting.

“The only issue I have with the bill is that we must be careful about applying percentages from fund raising initiatives; it may create problems in future,” he said.

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