2018 Budget: LCCI lauds 30.8% allocation to capital projects

The Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) has lauded  the Federal Government for allocating 30.8 per cent of the 2018 Federal Budget to capital projects.
The Director General of LCCI, Muda Yusuf, gave the commendation in a statement on Thursday in Lagos.
President Muhammadu Buhari had presented the N8.6 trillion 2018 Federal Budget to the National Assembly on November 7.
The N8.6 trillion 2018 Budget represents a 16 per cent increase in nominal term over the 2017 Budget of N7.44 trillion.
“We welcome the priority accorded to infrastructure in the Budget proposal focusing on roads, railways, power projects, water projects and second Niger bridge.
“Reference was made to the embarrassing state of the access to the ports and the public private initiative to fix it.

Investors and business agony

While describing the plan to connect the Lagos-Ibadan standard gauge to the Apapa and the Tin-Can Island port as a welcome development, Yusuf noted that time is of essence in the implementation of the project.
“There is an urgent need to save the private sector and investors from the agony of persistent gridlock at the Apapa and Tin-Can ports which accounts for over 70 per cent of import and export cargo in the country,” he said.
Yusuf said that it was imperative to formulate policies to mobilise private sector capital into the infrastructure space.
He said that consideration should be given to further reduction in cost of governance and scaling up remittances of surplus from MDAs to the coffers of government.