The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed on Monday said that privatisation of government agencies was to stop loss of public funds.

Mohammed, who was speaking at a “Stakeholders Media Interactive Forum” in Lagos, said the Federal Government had invested more than 100 billion dollars in establishing these enterprises.

He said that the federal government was also spending about three billion dollars annually on the public enterprises as grants, subsidies and import duty waivers before the commencement of the privatisation programme

The minister said that in spite of these massive investments, these enterprises failed to live up to expectations.

“They consumed a large proportion of resources without providing commensurate services. More importantly, they failed to allocate resources efficiently,” he said.

The minister said that privatization and economic reforms were deliberate and in response to the abysmal failure of public enterprises to halt unsustainable drain of the treasury.

He said that the Technical Committee on Privatisation and Commercialisation (TCPC), set up at the commencement of the privatisation exercise in 1988, privatised 89 out of 111 government agencies slated for privatisation.

Mohammed said that the TCPC offered 1.486 million shares to Nigerians and raised N3.2 billion for government.

He said that privatisation programme cut across various sectors of the economy, adding that the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) had initiated far reaching reforms in the telecommunication, pension, sea ports, solid minerals and power sectors.

The minister also said that the BPE had drafted eight reform bills in the transport, competition and consumer protection as well as the postal sectors which had been approved by the National Council on Privatisation and the Federal Executive Council.

He said that the privatisation exercise was also to abrogate monopoly and liberate the economy.

Mr Alex Okoh, Director General of BPE, said the bureau had attained some broad milestones in the past 18 years.

He said these included expanding private sector participation in the economy, attracting quality investors and capital, and achieving more efficiency in allocation of federal government resources.

Okoh listed some of the current challenges of the bureau to include the reluctance of some of government agencies listed for privatisation, paucity of funds, dwindling funding partnership with donor agencies and resistance by interest groups like labour unions.

He said that the current initiatives of BPE were poised to positively impact the economy in the areas of power generation and supply, improvement in the overall infrastructure. employment creation, food security and human capital development.

(NAN)