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From Uche Usim, Abuja
As Nigeria battles humongous sovereign debt of N38.005 trillion, the Managing Director (MD) of the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA), Mr. Uche Orji, has advised the federal government to avoid consumption borrowing due to its corrosive effect on the economy.
Orji gave the advice in Abuja on Tuesday at the Businessday Breakfast MeeUcheting on Macroeconomic Outlook: Innovation and Technology.
According to him, “Nigeria should borrow like a rich man, to drive returns, not as a poor man who borrows to consume”.
By that, he meant the loans should be channeled into many revenue-yielding projects and not for consumption.
Orji, while drawing comparison between Nigeria and Malaysia, said borrowing big for huge investments to drive returns was vital.
“As a country, if you want to borrow, you borrow big, you borrow to invest, you borrow to drive returns.
“How many of you know the GDP of Malaysia? It is about $380 billion. How many of you know the foreign debt of Maylasia? $200 billion. GDP similar to Nigeria, about $384 to about $400 billion. External debt is about $200 billion. The difference, Malaysia invests that money in things that produce revenue.
“We shouldn’t borrow like poor men. Poor men borrow to eat, poor men borrow to pay school fees, poor men borrow to survive. Rich men borrow to invest.
“So our philosophy of borrowing has to change. As a country, if we want to borrow to undertake gas industrialization. If we want to borrow to build 10 Indoramas and we want to go out to borrow $25 billion or $30 billion why not? Because those things will generate revenue”, he explained.
The NSIA boss said the Authority has banked ventures platform, a $40 million tech fund that looks at new ventures in Nigeria and NSIA is the leading investments.
He added that the NSIA, will be “investing in hyper skill data centre company and there are many reasons why this is very important”.
Orji stated that the NSIA will “not invest in things that are just there for speculation and this is why you don’t see us in things like bitcoin its an asset with intrinsic value, however the underpinning technology of block chain high performance competing is very important and something we would be looking at investing in but not in bitcoin itself”.
He called for creation of a Centre of Excellence to train Nigerian experts in various sectors, in order to drive the nation’s socio-economic development. “I am advocating for a Centre of Excellence. I believe that the Centre of Excellence should be able to pull everyone else gravitationally up. We must. It could be privately owned or government- funded” he said.
In his address, the Minister of Science and Technology, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, said “Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) serves as the mother of business. It will be difficult for business to thrive without the effective deployment of STI.
“Nations, with the largest economies in the world, are those that effectively deploy STI to nation-building. Hence, for business to grow faster in Nigeria, and our private sector to be stronger than they are today, we need to effectively deploy STI to nation building.”
