Osinbajo harps on synergy between public-private partnership to grow economy

The Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo, has again stressed the importance of a government, private sector partnership in the execution of development projects in the country saying it as the only way to grow the economy.
He said it was obvious that government alone cannot provide all the services and infrastructure needed in the country, hence the need to provide the enabling environment for the private sector to make it happen.
The Acting President said this while speaking at the 3rd Quarterly Business Forum held at the State House Conference Centre of the Presidential Villa, Abuja. He said the government will create the enabling environment for the private sector to thrive by making itself accessible.
The forum focused on how the digital economy and creative industry can be applied to solve challenges of governance.
According to him, “The real challenge is how to efficiently and faithfully implement these great ideas. I think for effective delivery, this partnership with the private sector is undoubtedly the way to go.
“So our approach in this respect and other sectors is that the delivery unit will invite and work with private sector players in our delivery clusters to deliver on quality and value in all these various sectors. This we will do in all the identified sectors.
“What we think will work is to create that environment such that private investment in this particular area thrives. Because government simply cannot provide any or all of these services, most times it just has to be private sector-driven and we will do our best to provide the enabling environment to make that happen.
“We will make ourselves accessible to you as much as possible. We think those kinds of partnerships and interventions are important. The only way to make government work is if the private sector invests in government. Not in investing its money but more investing in terms of time, attention and the kinds of partnerships we are building here,” he said.
Osinbajo, however, added that it will take commitment over a long period to sort out all the economic issues and government’s synergy with the private sector.
Answering questions during the interactive session, the Acting President said to fix the challenges with the Corporate Affairs Commission’s (CAC’s) online platform, which is strategic to its ease of doing business reforms, the government has decided to engage a private sector broadband infrastructure provider to manage the platform, expected to be fully operational in the next 30 days to guarantee that up time would be 99 per cent.
Osinbajo said the issue of broadband internet penetration was important and that the government was working to deal with and is also seeking the best partners in this respect.” Thanking the business community for attending the forum, Osinbajo said the government has created points of contacts to enable them contact the administration to receive ideas and strategies and also give feedback.
Senator Udoma Udo Udoma , the Minister of Budget and National Planning, ,earlier said that the government intends to leverage the power of the private sector to ensure that Nigeria becomes an investment destination, adding that the ERGP was hinged on science and innovation.