BPE sets committees to revive privatized entities in housing sector, others

The Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) has inaugurated four committees to come up with a mechanism for addressing the complexities and challenges hindering the growth of some privatised enterprises in the country which were handed over to the core investors over ten years ago.

The committees are on Housing Sector (the Bricks and Clay), Mines and Steel Development, Oil Palm and Automobiles and the Paper Mills committee which had earlier been inaugurated.

The committees are to provide policy makers with further insight into the practical realities facing the sectors in which the enterprises were privatised and proffer credible solutions to addressing the problems.

Membership of the Committees is drawn from the relevant sectors, ministries, the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) and the private sector.

Inaugurating the committees in Abuja recently, the Director General of the BPE, Mr. Alex A. Okoh recalled that the National Council on Privatisation (NCP) at its meeting of April 12, 2018 reviewed the performances of some privatised enterprises in the past ten years and observed that they occupied a strategic place in the nation’s economy but have remained suboptimal since privatization.

Okoh said the NCP also took into cognizance, the need to resuscitate and reposition the enterprises in order to enhance their market value and their overall contribution to the economy.

Consequently, he said, the NCP directed its secretariat the (BPE) to organise an Enterprise Stakeholders/Investors Forum with the objective of creating a platform where the Core Investors of the privatised enterprises, potential investors and relevant MDAs would meet and chart a way forward for their resuscitation through partnership between the private and public sectors.

Okoh said that it has been the custom in BPE to engage stakeholders in its programme design and execution in order to solicit their cooperation, support and participation to the success of the privatisation programme and the Nigeria economy.