Ahmed I. Shekarau
12 December 2003
The Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) has reviewed the time-table for the privatisation of various public corporations, just as it added the Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST) and the River Basins to its scheduled of companies slated for commercialisation.
Director-general of the BPE, Dr Julius Jirbil Bala who unfolded the revised timetable for the privatisation programme at his maiden interactive forum with business Editors, Wednesday in Abuja, disclosed that NIPOST and the River Basin Development Authorities are expected to be commercialised after 2005.
The new transaction timetable tagged: "Strategic plan for the privatisation process," categorised the enterprises into three terms of short, medium and long term ranges.
While enterprises that fall under the short and medium terms are scheduled to be privatised by March 2004 and end of 2005, those in the long term would be sold after 2005.
Explaining the decision to commercialise NIPOST and the River Basins, the BPE boss said the objective was to introduce reform measures that would make them operate in competitive manners like private concerns.
"We want NIPOST to begin to charge commercial rates like the other courier service provides so that they would offer efficient services.
"Also, we want to get private sector-oriented managers (for NIPOST) within the concept of a management contract, to try and make the workers in NIPOST begin to operate as business people," Dr Bala added, stressing that the same would apply to the river basin authorities.
Meanwhile, the revised privatisation time table has on schedule the Nigerian Truck Manufacturers, Kano, Nigerian Romanian Wood Industry, Chemical Company (of Nigeria) Senegal, Nigeria Railway Corporation's non-core assets, the rolling mills at Jos, Osogbo and Katsina, Aluminium Smelter Company of Nigeria (ALSCON), the West African Refinery Company, sierra-Leone and Afribank, all slated for sale in the short term, that is, before or by the end of March next year.
Enterprises slated for privatisation under the medium term (by the end of 2005), include the paper melts , vehicle assembly plants, fertiliser companies, Nigerian Machine Tools Company, the Ports, the Nigerian Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA), Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) Initial Public Offer (IPO), Nigerian Mining Corporation (NMC), oil palm companies, Delta Steel Company (DSC), the four refineries, Eleme Petrochemicals company of Nigeria, the Nigerian Gas Company (NGC) and NICON Insurance Corporation.
Those to be sold in the long term, that is, after 2005, however, include, Save Sugar, Onigbolo Cement Company, NIPOST, the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA), Ajaokuta Steel Company Limited (ASCL), the liquidation of Nigeria Airways, National Iron Ore Mining Company, Itakpe, Nigeria Coal Corporation, the River Basins and Durbar Hotel.
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