Reports

You Don’t Have To Borrow To Build Airport, Peter Obi Tells FG

Published

8 years ago

May 26, 2017

You don’t have to borrow to build Airports, former governor of Anambra State Peter Obi admonishes federal government.

He adviced that such huge sums of money for such projects supposed to be sourced from the Nigeria capital market.

The former governor made this assertion while speaking at the second Capital Market Summit. He spoke on the theme “The Road to Nigeria’s Economic Recovery” .

The event was organised by the Association of Stock broking Houses of Nigeria, ASHON in Lagos State.

According to the former governor, “Privatised public assets must be made to list in our market if they must be run profitably and efficiently. The idea of government providing intervention fund is not the best way to go about providing needed infrastructure to drive the economy.”

“Nigeria has been in contraction for five quarters, so we should work quickly to move away from this recession. There is nothing wrong with borrowing when there is recession, but it must be done reasonably to attract investments and savings. So, borrowing is not bad except when the money is not used judiciously.

While continuing Obi stated, “There was no savings yesterday, that is why we are where we are today. The value of our capital market is just too low, about $30billion and that cannot attract foreign investors. We cannot compare ourselves now to Mexico, Taiwan, Turkey, Indonesia, Singapore etc. whose economies were similar to ours in the 1990s.”

Having been in the financial institution himself, he asserted, “As stakeholders in the capital market, we are all aware that the capital market is simply a barometer that gauges the performance of the economy, hence we all have a duty to support the government in whatever form that can bring about dramatic turnaround of our economy as Nigeria struggles to climb out of recession”

“There is a strong correlation between the development of an economy and its capital market. Apart from other roles, capital market primarily helps to mobilise funds from the surplus economic units and channels them to the deficit ones. This underscores the fact that government’s budget deficit gap and critical infrastructure development can be financed through the instrumentality of the capital market. Mr. Peter Obi concluded.

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