Bayelsa plans to commercialise parastatals, agencies

The Bayelsa State Government says it has concluded
arrangements to commercialise some of its parastatals and
agencies.
The measure is to enable the state to diversify the local economy
in the face of dwindling revenues from the Federation Account, a
Government House statement said on Thursday.
The statement quoted the State Chief Economic Adviser, Mr.
Duate Iyabi, as saying the resolution was reached at the
59th Executive Council meeting of the state government in
Yenagoa, as part of efforts to move away from its mono-
economy.
According to Iyabi, the three key areas of the government’s
focus will be on power generation, agriculture as well as land
ownership and housing, as the administration can no longer
sustain its recurrent expenditure from the federal allocation.
He explained that the government ’s decision to commercialize
the state-owned parastatals and agencies was born out of its
inability to properly manage its businesses.
He stressed that the move would boost the internally generated
revenue of the state.
On power generation, Iyabi described the sector as an area where
the state has comparative advantage in, noting that
arrangements were underway to attract power developers to set
up their plants and sell power to the national grid.
On the provision of housing, he noted that the government had
identified two key locations in the state where it would embark on
the construction of low cost houses, medium and high-brow
houses for the people under a public, private partnership.
Also, the Commissioner for Trade, Industry and Investment ,
Kemela Okara, said the commercialisation policy was targeted at
realising the full potential of the agencies and the parastatals
with a view to ensuring job creation, revenue generation and
efficient service delivery.
Allaying the fears of workers , Okara explained that the
government would carry out an audit exercise in such enterprises
with a view to ascertaining their economic viability.
He said, “The primary objective is that we want to achieve the
true economic potential of these enterprises because the idea
behind setting them up in the first place was very good .
“The question is managing them effectively. So, the fate of the
workers would be greatly enhanced; the objective at the end of
the day is to increase the number of opportunities for jobs. So we
must keep faith with the exercise.”
On the proposed industrial park, he said construction work on the
first phase of the project would commence before the end of the
year as a lot of “off taker companies” had shown interest in the
project.