IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, has called on the Federal Government to encourage the establishment of medium-sized gas plants by private sector investors so as to boost the country’s power generation needs.

Speaking during an Infrastructure Roundtable organised by the Corporation, Jyrki Koskelo, IFC VP for Global Industries, noted that the private sector can play a larger role in expediting the country’s power sector reforms programme.

“The long-term success of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s banking sector reforms is dependent on government rapidly encouraging market demand for capital in large, commercially viable projects, especially in infrastructure.

To improve the competitiveness of Nigerian small and medium enterprises, power and transport infrastructure have to be improved and transformed sooner rather than later,” said Koskelo.

Koskelo further said that the Corporation has challenged prospective private financiers and project sponsors at the roundtable to pool and commit their risk capital for early-stage project development that will create well-structured projects capable of attracting further equity and debt financing.

According to Solomon Adegbie-Quaynor, IFC Country Manager, over 90 percent of Nigeria’s industrial customers self-generate base load power on a relatively small scale and with poor efficiency. “We should encourage medium-sized gas-fuelled efficient power supply with regulatory flexibility to distribute within and around industrial clusters.

Such changes would ensure that the productive sectors of industry, including SMEs, would receive reliable and affordable power supply that leads to increased employment and higher incomes for Nigerians,” he said.

The IFC Infrastructure Roundtable in Nigeria is a forum that brings together private and public sector players to debate and share ideas on how private capital and project management expertise can be mobilized to help address the infrastructure deficiencies in the country.

The Roundtable made the following key recommendations to help resolve infrastructure bottlenecks:
*Expediting development and financing of medium-size power plants with agreements from non-regulated industrial customers to off take the power, with excess sold into neighbouring clusters and the grid, with appropriate credit enhancements

*Developing a project development funding facility to help encourage and incubate projects capable of attracting bank and other private financing.