Ngozi Amuche
Financial experts in conjunction with legal practitioners and the health sector are seeking ways to leverage and improve Nigeria’s health sector.
They identified the capital market as one of the best instruments to help fund the health sector in Nigeria.
This is coming at a time when COVID-19 has exposed Nigeria’s weak and underfunded health care sector.
Speaking at the 2020 Capital Market Solicitors Association virtual annual business Luncheon, Director General, Securities and Exchange Commission, Lamido Yuguda, said the health sector has been grossly underfunded and COVID-19 has exposed this.
Yuguda said the health care sector was in dire need of infrastructure and manpower, adding that the sector required investment from the public and private sectors.
He explained that infrastructure financing of the health care sector required long term financing, and the capital market would be able to fund Nigeria’s health care.
In his Keynote address, Chairman, Advisory Board of First Cardiology Consultants, Olabode Agusto, said the biggest risk that the pool of savings would face was inflation risk because the long-term rate of inflation on the Nigerian Naira is about 12 percent per annum.
Agusto said that the implications of this is that savings held in Naira, and debts that would be repaid in fixed Naira terms would lose purchasing power at about 12 percent per annum.
According to him, it also means that the returns earned from investing in the pool of savings (net of costs) must be at least 12 percent per annum, to protect the buying power of the savings.