By PETER EGWUATU

The Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, has challenged operators in the Nigerian capital market to develop products tied to financing infrastructure needs of the country.

Director General of the Commission, Arunma Oteh, who made a remark on Monday, during the SEC’s Infrastructure roundtable in Lagos said, “This roundtable is both timely and important considering the magnitude of the challenge and the importance of immediately unlocking and accessing cheaper funds through the capital market to finance infrastructure projects across the length and breadth of our great country.”

According to her, “The statistics about African infrastructure deficit give an idea of the enormous resources that must be invested in infrastructure on the continent. Research by the World Bank shows that sub-Saharan Africa needs to spend about $93 billion a year or 15 percent of the region’s GDP, with the poorest countries needing to spend more, about 25 percent, of their GDP annually on infrastructure.

“In the case of Nigeria, the National Integrated Infrastructure Master Plan (NIIMP) estimates Nigeria’s infrastructure needs at $2.9 trillion over the next 30 years, beginning from 2014. The African Development Bank’s Infrastructure Action Plan (IAP) for Nigeria estimates $350 billion of investment in infrastructure for the next 10 years implying yearly investments of $35 billion in infrastructure equivalent to 13 percent of Nigeria’s GDP and over a third of SSA’s annual infrastructure needs.”

Oteh, stressed that the existing sources cannot cover half of this requirement, adding that between 2011 and 2013, the Federal Government of Nigeria allocated on average a third of its budget to capital expenditure but only about 35 percent of this was for infrastructure.