The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, has described the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) partner of choice for the federal government of Nigeria in the execution and successful delivery of major infrastructure projects and transformational initiatives.
A press statement by Special Adviser, Media & Communications to the minister, minister, Yunusa Tanko Abdullahi, said the minister who made this remark in her opening remarks at the plenary session on Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) at Africa Investment Forum (AIF – 2022).
She said, “Through the NSIA, we are building key roads and bridges under the Presidential Infrastructure Development Fund.
“We have revived our fertiliser blending facilities through the supply of high quality NPK under the Presidential Fertiliser Initiative and are partnering with Morocco to build an Ammonia plant. We are supporting artisanal and small-scale miners while building up our reserves through the presidential artisanal gold mining initiative.
“We have also commenced our journey towards the adoption of clean energy starting off with the development of a 10MW Grid Solar Plant. We have constructed cancer and medical diagnostic centres across the country.
“We recently commissioned a state-of-the-art animal feed facility linked to hundreds of hectares of maize farms. We are tackling today’s problems head on. We allocated a certain proportion of NSIA’s funds for investments in innovative pioneer sectors within and outside Nigeria.”
She said when Nigeria’s SWF commenced operations in 2012; its capital was $1billion. However, since its inception, the fund did not receive any additional capital till 2016/2017 when the Buhari administration came in.
“We were very quick to identify the importance of the NSIA in Nigeria’s development. Therefore, we focused on ensuring it gets funded, no matter how little, regardless of our fiscal challenges.
“Our administration has been gradually injecting money into the NSIA. At the end of 2021, NSIA’s core assets under management has now grown to $2.2 billion since commencement of its operations and we have about $4billion in total assets, regardless of the many rainy days we went through recently. And the fund has been profitable consistently.”
