Posted by By CHRISTIAN OCHIAMA on
Union Bank Nigeria Plc and a Chinese Group have concluded arrangements to raise $1 billion, equivalent of N117billion, for infrastructural development in Lagos State.
Union Bank Nigeria Plc and a Chinese Group have concluded arrangements to raise $1 billion, equivalent of N117billion, for infrastructural development in Lagos State.
This was disclosed in Lagos by the Union Bank's Executive Director, Corporate and International Banking, Mr Austen Obigwe, who also indicated that he was on his way to China for the finishing touch to the agreement.
Obigwe, who was one of the discussants at an interactive session with stakeholders and the media on financing infrastructure in Nigeria, put together by the Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE) and the Union Bank plc, told journalists, 'we are doing that because we have confidence in Lagos State."
The bank executive affirmed, 'Lagos State has a history of continuity, of obeying and respecting whatever contractual obligations the preceding government has gone into. We see Lagos as being highly credit worthy."
The bank executive said that the National Assembly should enact a law to ensure the irreversibility of contracts once entered into.
According to him, 'what the government needs to do now is to have an Act, a law that would stipulate that any contract that has been entered into should be allowed to go full term. If there are errors in them, people should learn from such errors. You don't say because there is an error, if I put in 100million dollars in a transaction and because you have cause to believe that the contractor did not do one or two things, then you cancel it."
Explaining why most banks do not support some states, especially a year to election time, the bank executive said that it was 'because we are afraid that if the sitting governor does not come back, the new governor will start changing the rules again."
Much as the Obigwe was in support of government's policy on privatization, he said that it should not be a wholesale thing.
Said he: 'What I am saying is that the government should not say we are privatising roads and expect people to pay when you don't have an alternative for them to use."
Obigwe also said that in financing infrastructure that would attract toll in a Public/Private Partnership arrangement, the government must give the public an alternative that would not attract toll.