Dr Chinyere Almona, Director-General, Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) has charged the Federal Government to value and utilise its assets to generate more revenue for the country and increase foreign exchange inflows.
Almona gave the advice in a statement on Sunday, saying the steps would help address the country’s current rising debt profile.
She noted that debt service to revenue ratio for the period of January to May 2021 stood at about 98 per cent, up from 83 per cent recorded in 2020 according to the country’s budget implementation report.
Almona described the country as an asset-rich nation owning hundreds of large state-owned companies, valuable parcels of land, and built structures in prime commercial locations.
The LCCI DG, however, noted that the assets were grossly underutilised and contributed too little to the country’s fiscal and financial situation because their market values were currently not known.
She stated that government needed to identify public assets, determine the worths, and create a dynamic online digital platform where the financialised and commercialised assets could be offered for investment.
“Nigeria needs to do an official identification of its assets such as corporate assets, physical assets, intangible assets and human capital in terms of location, purpose, and usage contained in a national asset register.
“Corporate assets should be securitised via public share issuance to raise equities, physical assets such as idle or under-utilised properties could be repurposed and redeveloped for commercialisation to generate revenue.
“Intangible assets such as breaking government monopoly in the infrastructure sector (railway, pipelines, power transmission) should be liberalised for investors to commit equity funds into these sectors.
“Massive investment in skill and talent development to increase the pool of the country’s human capital.
“The financialisation of Nigeria’s human assets will boost net foreign income and remittance inflows into the economy.
“The recommendations above do not connote the sale of national assets but a mechanism to generate more revenue from the assets without their outright sales,” she said.
Almona also called for the replacement of existing debt stocks with asset-linked debt.
This, she said, would ease the debt servicing burden, attract greenfield Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into publicly-listed state-owned companies and generate new revenue streams from commercialised real estate portfolios.
“This is a more sustainable way of revenue generation and boosting foreign exchange inflows,” she said. (NAN)
