Sigma Pension harps on increased private-public sector collaboration

The Managing Director, Sigma Pensions, Dave Uduanu has stressed the need for more collaboration between the private and public sector to enhance economic development as well as meet the target in the Economic Growth Recovery Plan document (EGRP).

Uduanu also urged government to create more sustainable investment opportunities for private sector to explore.

He stated this this recently at the Rand Merchant Bank’s 5th anniversary in Lagos recently.

According to him: “The key is for the private sector to engage more with the government while investment banks and intermediaries should prepare projects that investors such as insurance and pension funds can invest in.”

On whether pension’s funds would invest in infrastructure development, he said: “The pension funds are looking at forming a consortium to look at such investments because those are large scale investments and such investments are usually beyond one pension fund.

“So we can work with some of the development finance institutions (DFI) to help prepare teach and support organise these investments and then bring them to the market so essentially, to make them investable.”
Furthermore, he added that with the ERGP in place, engaging the private sector to support funding in infrastructure is paramount.

Uduanu added: “The economic growth and recovery plan envisages increasing the government’s revenue from six percent to 15 percent in five years. So that seems to me that they are in a hurry. So in terms of timeline, these are things that need to happen now.

“So if you look at tax breaks, government can begin to do it now. But increasing the revenue of government, essentially, government needs to improve tax administration.

”On the fiscal side, the interest rate incentives we are asking for is not difficult but it is for government to focus on the right things and I think if you concentrate and put your mind in it, it can be done within a period of one year.

He added: “We are looking at coming together to invest alongside with the government on a PPP basis on big projects. Some of these projects are beyond the capacity of individual pension funds. I am optimistic that some infrastructure deals would be done. We are caution of the facts but we do not want to rush into it without doing our investment analysis.”