The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria(CBN), Mr. Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, has decried the huge infrastructure need of the country stressing that it was still a major challenge to the financial sector.
According to a statement from the apex bank yesterday, Sanusi was quoted to have said this during a lecture delivered at annual Sir Patrick Gillam Lecture Series in the London School of Economics.
The lecture series have in the past treated a range of contemporary economic issues of global concern, with prominent academic specialists and policy makers speaking before audiences of LSE staff and students as well as interested members of the public.
Nigeria’s infrastructure deficit according to the Urban Development Bank of Nigeria(UDBN) currently stood at N35trillion.
Speaking on the topic “The Global Crisis and the Nigerian Economy: The Central Bank of Nigeria Responses,” Sanusi, noted that the economy was still plagued by some daunting challenges despite? robust economic growth.
The challenges, he said, have slowed down the transmission of such growth indices to higher employment opportunities.
His words: “The link between major growth drivers, particularly agriculture and manufacturing, continue to be weak and the required costs of the expected infrastructural needs of the economy are daunting and remained a major challenge to financial sector.”
The governor also noted that “the need for a low-cost long-term infrastructure financing requires more than the CBN alone can tackle,” adding that “major bottlenecks and supply-side constraints, including enabling legal framework have slowed the responsiveness of some CBN reform measures.”???
Sanusi, however, offered a ray of hope noting that “substantial progress has been made and significant public confidence has been restored to the banking sector with the reform measures adopted by the bank.”