Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Mr. Wale Edun has said Nigeria can generate $13 billion from its national assets.
The minister disclosed this on Tuesday in Lagos while speaking at the launching of the Afrinvest 2023 Nigerian Banking sector report.
Represented by the Managing Director/Chief Executive, Ministry of Finance Incorporated ( MoFI), Mr. Armstrong Katang, Edun said the government has set out plans to help it accomplish the feat.
According to him, part of the plan includes enumerating all the national Assets, introducing governance, monitising and optimising the assets.
Edun said the above will be achieved via a National Assets Register, to be created by MoFI, which will be leveraged to generate revenue of up to 3.0 per cent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product, GDP or $13.3 billion.
He added that the above plans will also be used to increase the value of National Assets Under Management (AuM), of the MoFI to N100 trillion from the present value of N18 trillion.
The Minister added that the above is among the measures designed to boost Federal Government revenue and achieve Revenue to GDP of 25 per cent by 2026 from the present 8.0 per cent.
Highlighting the role of MOFI in achieving the Revenue to GDP target, Edun said: “We have properties that are lying fallow around the world, not being used. In fact, they’re liabilities. That has to change. You cannot be renting a property in the same city for $20,000 a month, whereas you have another property in another city lying fallow and wasting away. You live in Lagos, go to the Central Business District (CBD), close to Tafawa Balewa Square (TBS), most ministries have their buildings there. How do you let such prime properties in the neck of the world dance? And we say we don’t have money. Nigeria is too blessed to be poor.
“I did say that our target is to grow our AUM to $100 trillion. In fact, every day, the more I do this work, the more confident I am that it can be done and it will be done, because we do have the assets. At the moment, my chairman here mentioned that $18.3 trillion, and I just reminded him that that was based on the old exchange rate. That does not include our concessioned assets. It does not include any of our real estate assets. It does not include any of our infrastructure assets.
“So for us, our strategy is very simple. The first thing is to enumerate all the assets that we own across the different asset classes.
“After we do that, second is we introduce governance, because we believe governance is fundamental in value creation. And then thirdly, monetization and optimization, which would also include rationalisation.
“There is evidence that if we succeed in creating a national assets register, and we put the policies and the regulation in place, two things can happen. One is that the revenues that will come from just that effort is equivalent to 3%, or can be up to 3% of your GDP. Let us suppose for the purpose of this exercise that our GDP is $450 billion. So you’re talking about $13.3 billion extra revenues per year that can come from that exercise.
“The second is that the AUM of those assets that are put together could be up to two times your GDP. So if we drive ourselves hard, we should have AUM not less than even if it’s 1x of our GDP, which is $450 million.”