Nigeria’s weak infrastructure affecting capital market contribution to economy – Uwaleke
A professor of Capital market, Uche Uwaleke has said that Nigeria has one of the lowest stock of infrastructure to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) among emerging economies, despite capital market contribution to the nation’s economic growth.
Uwaleke who stated this while addressing financial Journalists at a conference said that this has impacted on the growth of the market.
He said the National Development Plan (NDP) was designed in part, to address the huge infrastructure gap in the country.
He noted that for the country to narrow this gap according to the National integrated infrastructure master plan, Nigeria needs to invest $3 trillion in infrastructure over the next 30 years which is $100 billion annually.
He said this translates to a yearly Investment of over N42 trillion and the total amount needed is more than the size of the total annual budget of the federal and state subnational governments.
The Former Commissioner for Finance Imo State said that financing this huge infrastructure gap presents a formidable challenge to the government given Nigeria’s low revenue to GDP ratio of less than 10 per cent, making the capital market route inevitable.
He, however, said that the short term funding profile of the money market makes it unsuitable for capital formation to fast track economic growth and development.
He said the extent to which the Nigerian capital market is able to facilitate economic development is a function of its developmental level.
