Nigeria is ready to collaborate with UK, others on Economic Development – Ahmed

The Federal Government of Nigeria on Saturday expressed its readiness to partner with any group or stakeholders towards the transformation and economic development of the country.

Minister of Finance, Mrs Zainab Ahmed stated this at the closing session of the UK-Nigeria Climate Finance Accelerator workshop (CFA) held at the Zonal office of the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, in Lagos, weekend.

Ahmed, represented by Mr Israel Igwe, Director, Economic Research and Policy, Ministry of Finance, said there was need for a coordinated green climate finance platform like the CFA in the economy.

According to her, the CFA programme is an innovative concept that would aid government’s developing approach of the “Ease of Doing Business”.

In his presentation, Mr Chris Dodwell, Director, Climate Change and Clean Growth Ricardo Energy, called on stakeholders in the financial sector to collaborate towards financing developmental projects.

Dodwell said that CFA was an innovative international initiative supported by the UK Government and other international donors including Nigeria, Colombia and Mexico.

According to him, its aim is to accelerate the transformation of countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) into bankable projects to attract investment from the private sector.

He added that CFA was a powerful example of creating a productive dialogue between financiers and policymakers, focused on scalable opportunities.

“The CFA progresses financing proposals for identified projects while ensuring Technical Assistance is provided to policymakers across ministries so that planing for delivery of the NDC is better aligned with available capital from local and international markets.

“For its actualisation and success, there is need for dialogue and collaboration among policymakers, governments, project developers and financial experts,” Dodwell said.

Contributing, Mr Kyari Bukar, former Chairman, Nigeria Economy Summit Group (NESG), said the CFA programme was the kind of investment initiative the country currently needed to boost its investment portfolios for enhanced economic growth.

Bukar said the initiative would help to diversify investment portfolio of the banking sector and also transform the capital market.

“There is a driven finance community that is growing in the Nigerian economy, which needs to be identified and developed.

“With the much-valued support of the Nigeria Economic Summit Group, since October 2018, we have been engaging with private sector companies interested in undertaking ambitious low carbon development projects.

“This is with a view to creating a mature pipeline of bankable projects contributing to Nigeria’s NDC and strengthening the climate finance capacities of public and private sector institutions,” he said.

Four banks namely; Access, Union, Sterling and First City Monument Bank (FCMB) made presentations of the bank’s proposed projects.