Privatisation: Economist Harps On Int’l Best Practices

An economist, Mr
Bayo Rotimi, has advised the Federal Government to apply international best practices in privatising the country’s assets.
Rotimi, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Quest Advisory Services Limited, told The Tide source recently in Lagos that previous privatisation of state-owned enterprises had failed to deliver maximum benefits.
He advised government to sell off “unproductive” assets to individuals or groups with the capacity technical, financial and managerial competence to revitalise them.
“The World Bank guidelines say, look for people that have technical competence, they actually score them; your minimum technical score must be 70 percent.
“Then, after that, look for people with financial and managerial capacity.
“If those three elements are present then these people constitute viable entities that you can handover these things to.
“So, it is really for government through the Bureau of Public Enterprises to do the right thing.
“To ensure that it is only credible people that buy government assets.
“A lot of what we have seen in the past is privatisation had become a vehicle for political patronage where our assets are dashed away to unqualified people.
“So, if we stick by the rules, the private sector is proven globally to be a more efficient manager of resources than the public sector.
“It is not an experiment that we are trying out for the first time, it is a global fact.
Rotimi stressed the need to liberalise the economy, saying entrepreneurs should be encouraged to put into the economy a lot of creativity and resourcefulness through viable policies.
According to him, there is no great business prospect in the “command and control system” in managing the economy and that there is a global shift towards reformation.
He noted that versatile operators of small and medium need tax holidays, “access to low cost sustainable financing” and capacity building to boost Nigeria’s revenue profile, saying entrepreneurs are not government