The Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry has urged the Federal Government to formally identity all its assets, from physical to intangible, in a bid to generate revenue through public share issuance and also increase FX inflows.
This was disclosed by the Director-General, Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), Dr Chinyere Almona, in a statement on Sunday in Lagos, according to the News Agency of Nigeria.
The LCCI boss stated that Nigeria underutilises her assets, which does not contribute much to the country’s fiscal and financial situation, even though it owns hundreds of large companies, valuable parcels of land, and built structures in prime commercial locations.
What the LCCI boss said
Almona said, “Nigeria needs to do an official identification of its assets such as corporate assets, physical assets, intangible assets and human capital in terms of location, purpose, and usage contained in a national asset register.
“Corporate assets should be securitised via public share issuance to raise equities; physical assets such as idle or under-utilised properties could be repurposed and redeveloped for commercialisation to generate revenue.
“Intangible assets such as breaking government monopoly in the infrastructure sector (railway, pipelines, power transmission) should be liberalised for investors to commit equity funds into these sectors.
“Massive investment in skill and talent development to increase the pool of the country’s human capital.
“The financialisation of Nigeria’s human assets will boost net foreign income and remittance inflows into the economy.”
She said that recommending such measures is not a sale of national assets but a mechanism to generate more revenue from the assets without their outright sales. She added that existing debt stocks can also be replaced with asset-linked debt in a bid to ease debt service burden and attract FDI to state-owned enterprises, which is a sustainable way of revenue generation and boosting foreign exchange inflows.