Project Finance, Nigeria's '007' Executive Order, and the Creation of a New Tradable Instrument
Image Courtesy: Resource Planning Group Georgia Resolving the infrastructure deficit in Nigeria has been a major point of discuss over the last decade with several roundtables, conferences, and stakeholder meetings brainstorming viable and sustainable financing options for bridging the infrastructure gap. In 2018, the African Development Bank had estimated that a whopping $3Trillion would be required to fund the infrastructure deficit in Nigeria over the next 26 years. Financing infrastructure development projects in Nigeria has, in the past and till date, largely been through debt. However, with a rising debt profile of $73.21Billion as at September 2018, and the call by international stakeholders for the country to focus more on domestic loans, the Nigerian government appears to have devised an innovative way of funding a class of infrastructure projects – Roads. The ‘007’ Order On January 25, 2019, the Nigerian President signed Executive Order 007, an or