December 12, 20214
By Yakubu LAAH InvestAdvocate
Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE)-Nigeria needs about $113 billion of investments in infrastructure such as roads, railway and power within six (6) years to set free the oil and gas industry, Benjamin Dikki, director general (DG) of Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) said on Thursday according to a Bloomberg report.
The report quoted Dikki as saying that Nigeria requires about $60 billion for its hydrocarbon sector.
According to the DG of BPE, Nigeria’s government is losing $287 million a month due to its failure to pass an wide-ranging petroleum industry-reform bill that has been stuck at the national assembly for years which was meant to give the nation a greater share of profits.
Dikki disclosed that about $33 billion of investment is needed to improve the rail network and build new roads across the country. ‘’The power sector requires $18 billion to $20 billion. The government can’t finance all these requirements and is changing its laws and regulations to aid private sector investment,’’ he said.
This is coming on the heels of lower the economic-growth forecast for 2015 by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s minister of finance as result of sliding global oil prices that has eroded Nigeria’s foreign reserve and subsequent devaluation of the naira; Nigeria’s local currency by the Central bank.
The nation’s external reserves fell to $35.8 billion on December 9, down 19.5 percent from $44.5 billion recorded same period of last year.
The reserves have been declining at a fast pace in the last few months as the CBN sustained its drive to defend the naira currency from the foreign exchange reserves.
Nigeria’s reserves, which stood at $37.7 billion a month ago, had fallen by $2 billion within one month; it went down from $39.1 billion on October 21 to $37.1 billion on November 21.