The Federal Executive Council (FEC) on Wednesday approved the transaction parties for the one billion Eurobond it intends to issue.
The approval followed a memo on the issue presented by the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun to the council presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari.
The transaction parties approved are Citi Group, Standard Charted Bank, Stanbic IBTC, White and Case, Banwo and Ighodalo, and Africa Practice Communications.
Addressing State House correspondents on the outcome of the meeting, the minister who was joined by his Information and Culture, and Environment counterparts, Lai Mohammed and Amina Mohammed respectively, said the Eurobond was part of the funding programme for the 2016 budget.
She said a Certificate of “No Objection” has already been obtained from the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) with government hoping for a significant interest in the deal.
Adeosun also hinted that the approved issuance parties would be used by the Federal Government in subsequent bond issuance in the next three years unless there was a major problem with them.
She 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 BPP for the appointment of those parties having undertaken fully competitive open tender process.
“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 quite a bit of demand for emerging markets’ papers.
“Nigeria’s paper is currently trading around 7 to 8 per cent mark. 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 re-tendering. Unless there is a major problem with any of them, they will be our parties for the next three years.”
Also approved by FEC was a memo to finalise the amendment to the gazette of the establishment of the hydrocarbon pollution restoration process/purchase.
Minister of Environment, Mohammed, who spoke on the issue, said the gazette was the vehicle “that is supposed to have all the government structures to allow us to do the clean up in the Niger Delta beginning with Ogoniland and the implementation of the UNEP report.”
She said this was important because the past gazette did not put in place some of the needed government structures “that would be held accountable for the enormous amount of money that is already available to spend.”
She added: “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.”
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