CEM REPORT, FINANCE | As part of measures to revive over N30 trillion in non-performing assets and boost government revenue, the federal government has approved the restructuring of the Ministry of Finance Incorporated (MOFI).
The federal government by restructuring plans to fully set up MOFI as a world-class investment company with a new management and board to move from the civil service structure under the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation, with core professionals with specialisation in portfolio management.
The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed disclosured at the public presentation of the 2023 budget proposals in Abuja.
“We started the process of re-engineering the MOFI, saddled with the responsibility of managing government assets.
“MOFI has been existing for many years ago and has gradually become quite inefficient. So, we have got the president’s approval to start the process of re-engineering MOFI and we are now at the stage where we hope in the next one month or six weeks, we will be able to relaunch MOFI.
“We’ve been able to take stock of the assets that are in the books of MOFI and even without taking stock of the ones that are not in the books of MOFI, we have about N30 trillion in terms of assets size. So, if we are looking for a debt of N10 trillion, we already have assets of N30 trillion.
“We are going to open these assets for investments, so we will issue different kinds of equities investments into these assets. The government doesn’t have the kind of resources to recapitalise these assets.
“When I talk about assets, I am talking about our investments like the Bank of Industry (BOI), the Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN), Galaxy Backbone and several other agencies of government; companies that the government has set up.
“A few of them are doing well and delivering the books but our assessment is what they’re doing can still be better by incremental adjustments.
“I give you an example; we have the railways in the books of MOFI at something like N20 million as the asset size and we are conducting a re-evaluation. By the time we finish the re-evaluation, the value of the Nigerian Railway Corporation will run into trillions. Also, by the time we finish the re-evaluation of our airports, it will run into trillions.
“There is a process that is ongoing, we’ll have MOFI fully set up a world-class investment company with a new management and a new board to move from the civil service structure where it sits as a unit under the office of the Accountant General of the Federation, and get core professionals that are really focused and specialised in portfolio management and driving investments to run better.”
Ahmed added that efforts were ongoing to amend the books to raise equity in order open up investment for Nigerians and non-Nigerians to invest in the assets.
