Foreign Sponsors Driving Nigeria’s Infrastructure Projects — World Bank

By Joseph Ayinde

Projects with foreign sponsors have played an important role in developing sizable infrastructure projects in Nigeria, the World Bank said on Thursday.

The World Bank said this in its report titled ‘Private participation in infrastructure 2020 annual report’.

It said sizable 2020 PPI investment commitments in Nigeria were mainly due to a big-ticket natural gas pipeline project.

The report said, “Nigeria has managed to report PPI investment commitments for five consecutive years since 2015. Sizable 2020 PPI investment commitments in Nigeria were mainly due to a big-ticket natural gas pipeline project.

“The $2.6bn pipeline will transport up to 3,500 million cubic feet of gas a day from various gas gathering projects in southern Nigeria.

“Projects with foreign sponsors, especially from China, have played an important role in developing sizable infrastructure projects in Nigeria.”

According to the report, there are four natural gas projects in some countries with $6.9bn in investment commitments in 2020.

It stated that one of them was the Ajaokuta–Kaduna–Kano pipeline, which was being developed by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation to transport natural gas from southern Nigeria to central Nigeria.

“The $2.8bn pipeline project represents phase one of the 1,300-kilometer Trans-Nigerian Gas Pipeline project, which is being developed as part of Nigeria’s Gas Master Plan to utilise the country’s surplus gas resources for power generation as well as for consumption by domestic customers,” it stated.

It said Mexico’s $4bn natural gas pipeline, storage, and corridor project was another one.

The report said it would be the largest natural gas storage facility in North America.

“The pipelines will provide a faster, more economical means of delivering natural gas to locations around the world,” it stated.

According to the report, investment commitments in 2020 stood at $45.7bn across 252 projects, marking a 52 per cent decline from 2019 levels.

Private investment commitments had not fallen to these levels since 2004, when investment totalled $31.3bn, it stated.

Nevertheless, it added that despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, investments in the second half of the year increased by 15 per cent from the first half of the year.

It stated that private investment commitments in 2020 fell in all regions except for Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa.

According to the report, the impact of COVID-19 was most severe in East Asia and Pacific, followed by Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe and Central Asia, and South Asia.

It stated, “Investment commitments in International Development Association countries in 2020 totalled $6.2bn across 30 projects in 16 countries.

“This compared to $8.4bn across 27 projects in 18 countries in 2019. It is notable that there were more projects in IDA countries despite the pandemic.”

Also, it added, 2020 investment commitments in IDA countries were 21 per cent higher than the 2015-2019 average of $5.2bn.