The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar has proposed innovative financing of infrastructure in the power sector.
This is coming amidst continued collapse of the national grid.
According to the former Vice-president, the financing would involve the facilitation of a review of the financial, legal, and regulatory environment to promote private investment in the country’s power sector.
He made the recommendation via a post on his Facebook page
Atiku wrote: “I am reliably informed that there was a total National Grid Collapse at precisely 12:23pm today. This is one collapse too many. It is the 6th time this is happening this year alone.
“Due to the priority that I place on the power sector upon which the successes of other sectors are hinged, I am proposing innovative financing of infrastructure that will involve the facilitation of a review of the financial, legal, and regulatory environment to promote private investment in power, among other sectors.
“I’ll promote the incentivisation, with tax breaks, a consortium of private sector institutions to establish an Infrastructure Debt Fund (IDF) to primarily mobilise domestic and international private resources for the financing and delivery of large infrastructure projects across all the sectors of the economy.
“The IDF will have an initial investment capacity of approximately US$20 billion. In addition, I’ll cause the creation of an Infrastructure Development Credit Guarantee Agency to complement the operation of the IDF by de-risking investments in infrastructure to build investor confidence in taking risks and investing capital.”
