Mr Mansur Ahmed, Director-General, Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission, has advised the Aviation Ministry to embrace Public Private Partnership (PPP) in developing the sector.
Ahmed gave the advice in an interview on Monday, in Abuja, while reacting to the ministry’s 2012 budget defense at the senate.
Mrs Stella Odua, the minister of aviation, said at the budget defense of the ministry on Jan. 25 that the Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) concession deal was not viable in the aviation sector as, according to her, concessioning takes a longer process.
Odua said that 125 concessions had been made on many projects without a single one working.
According to her, what is needed in the aviation industry is a joint venture arrangement as BOT would not be favorable to government.
She added that joint venture was only required at the management level and not at the terminals.
However, Ahmed disagrees with the position of the minister on the issue, noting that there could be some fundamental lapses in the projects’ concessioning arrangements in the sector.
“To me, it’s surprising that a minister who has particularly strong private sector back ground has no confidence in PPP.
?“My assumption is that that lack of confidence may have arisen because of the experience of the previous PPP in that ministry.
“Some of the PPP done in the ministry are actually giving a lot of difficulty; I think there is need for communication and to be honest, we have been trying to meet the relevant minister to say there’s nothing wrong with PPP process.”
According to him, the problem was that some of the processes were not properly done and the most of the assumptions were wrong.
“If you assume that in the next five years there will be 4 million passengers going through Murtala Mohammed AirPort and within the fourth year you still 1.5million passengers, you know that assumption was wrong in the first instance.”
This, he said, was the reason the commission had been emphasizing on the need to study every project concept, project well and use reliable information to structure the project.
Ahmed noted that if that was not done, the concessioning arrangement would have succeeded.
?He said that the commission would continue to educate relevant ministries on the need to adhere strictly to PPP procedure so that projects could succeed to enable Nigerians have value for their money.
He also decried hasty completion of projects for the purpose of inauguration by politicians without following due process.
On the outstanding MM2 concession saga, Ahmed said that the commission would continue to sensitise? both the ministry and the concessionaire to achieve a positive result.
“We are engaging the ministry as well as the partner, the concessioner to say look, lets come and find a way to resolve this dispute.
“We have actually submitted the detail proposal on how the dispute should be settled and incidentally, we have met with the concessioner and he said he is quite willing to sit down and renegotiate the project.
“But of cause, we need the ministry committed because if the ministry is not committed, you cannot clap with one hand as it were.”
He said that government had expressed interest to resolve the outstanding issues and expressed the hope that the commission would work with the ministry to resolve them.?