The Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), last Tuesday in Abuja opened financial bids for five subsidiaries of the Nigerian Mining Corporation (NMC) and technical consultants for power sector monitoring in the country.
The Director-General of the Bureau, Mr Alex Okoh said the event was a significant leap forward for the public enterprise reform programme of the Federal Government after a few years in the doldrums.
“However, it is our fervent hope that this is only the restart of a transaction pipeline that is being reengineered and reinvigorated to deliver on the commitment of the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.
“A mandate which is to deliver the kind of responsible privatisation and enterprise reform programme which the generality of Nigerians deserve and have yearned for.
“The path we are taking is borne of a vision of rediscovery and repositioning, which we have articulated and named the New Enterprise Transformation Strategy (NETS),’’ he said.
On power, Okoh said it was one of the most critical sectors of our economy and the Federal Government was desirous of seeing that the privatisation programme brought significant improvement to the sector.
He explained that the Bureau’s mandate required it to ensure the success of the privatisation through continuous monitoring of the enterprises for such periods as may be considered necessary.
“It requires us to ensure the privatisation was in line with the obligations covenanted in the agreements that the core investors and concessionaires signed with the government.
“And we have introduced a robust corporate governance framework for the Bureau’s representation of the government on the boards of enterprises in which the government retained some equity holding or shares.
“The framework will address noticeable gaps of the past and a strict code of ethics has been implemented that will guide the rules of engagement with the enterprises”, he said.