The Federal Executive Council (FEC) yesterday approved the appointment of transaction parties for the one billion dollars Eurobond to be issued next month.
Minister of Finance Mrs Kemi Adeosun broke the news after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting.
With her were Minister of Information Lai Mohammed and Minister of the Environment Mrs Amina Mohammed
The transaction parties are Citigroup, Standard Chartered Bank, Stanbic IBTC, Whiten case, Banwo and Ighodalo and Africa Practices Communications Advisers.
Mrs Adeosun said: “The one billion Eurobond programme is part of the funding for 2016 budget and we hope to be able to commence the process in January. We obtained certificate of no objection from the Bureau of public procurement (BPP) for the appointment of those parties, having undertaken full competitive open tender process.
She went on: “We are confident that we will be able to complete the transaction expediently with significant interest. The oil price stability obviously is helping us. Currently, there is a bit of demand for emerging market papers.”
According to her, Nigeria’s paper is trading around seven to eight per cent mark.
The minister added: “Angola came out in November with bench UAD I.56 and Gabon in June did 8.25 plus, Ghana in September did 9.25. We are expecting to get quite a competitive pricing on the issuance programme, which I said is to be used for the purpose of funding capital projects in the 2016 budget within the month of January.
“The other thing to note is that these parties that have been appointed would run any Eurobond issuance programme that we do for the next three years so that we don’t have to keep on retendering, unless there is a major problem with any of them they will be our parties for the next three years.”
The Environment Minister said the Council considered finalising the amendment of the gazette for the establishment of the hydrocarbon pollution restoration process/purchase.
The gazette, she said, is the vehicle that is supposed to have all the government structures to clean up the Niger Delta, starting with Ogoni and the implementation of the UNEP report.
“Why is this so important? Well, what we have said in the past, the past gazette did not put in place some of the government structures we need, such as the government board, like the board of trustees or a structure that would be held accountable for the enormous amount of money that is already available to be spent and additional monies that we can leverage from the money that we have that is being offered by different partners.
“This now will enable us to put more structure to the board of trustees who require a legal entity to put the resources in and then we hope that in the new year we will begin to roll out, to begin with the building of the centre of excellence. The integrated soil treatment centre will also go up and then we’ll begin training, but in this case we’ll start training many of the women on the livelihood side in the many of the contaminated areas.
“Of recent, you would have heard that in Ogoni land itself we have pipelines …. I’ve visited there…those that are most affected there are the women farmers. So we have to find better ways of speaking with communities but also ensuring that livelihoods of women are not affected.
“We are also speaking to many of the young people there; we have a good feedback from those who are interested in being a part of the rollout of the clean-up Ogoni land in the new year.”
