 Let me join everyone before me in welcoming you to this investor seminar which where we hope to showcase the investment opportunities arising from Nigeria's economic reform and privatization activities. I think that many who have observed this current Nigerian government would agree that an article of faith for this government is the importance of mobilizing private capital and participation for improving efficiencies and driving economic growth. And this clearly explains why we have this collaboration today between the Bureau of Public Enterprises which as we know is in charge of our sectoral reform programs with the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission and the Nigerian Exchange Group to host this seminar as an important platform for drawing attention to investment opportunities for both our local and foreign friends and collaborators. One thing this webinar will draw attention to is the fact that past sectoral reforms in Nigeria have brought about increased opportunities and extensive economic and social gains. For example, our pension reform which replaced the old defined benefit scheme with a contributory pension scheme led to the creation of the pension commission, PENCOM, which now has over 12.3 trillion pounds of money in pension fund assets under management. Similarly, the reform of our telecommunication sector increased the number of telephone lines in the country from about 450,000 in 2001 to currently well over 140 million active telephone lines and 97.9 percent tele-density. Equally notable is our port sectoral reform which led to the concession of various terminals bringing about major investments and transformation of the various port terminals including in terms of revenue, employment and operational efficiency. Then of course we're all very familiar I'm sure with the power sector reform which resulted in the undangling of our old power holding company of Nigeria the PHCF and the privatization of its successor companies. Now these are not yielded all of the very excellent results we expected but I must say that the federal government is working with the key stakeholders in the sector to address some of the various challenges impeding its growth. But I think that our experience with the private sector sorry with the power sector underscores the importance of using the right models in attracting investment especially in the provision of infrastructure and what we've seen is that while you are privatizing utilities of the size of our former PHCM we simply have to be far more intentional in looking out for the right models and the right type of investors and also looking at funding for these investors over an extended period of time. And these are some of the challenges that we've seen but I think that it's an excellent lesson and there's so much that we're learning and clearly this will impact the way that we approach privatization especially of government utilities with power. Undoubtedly a major challenge of the Nigerian economy is this limited infrastructure stock and this is something we've spoken about time and time again. It's estimated to be about 35 percent of GDP that's our infrastructure stock as compared to 70 percent of GDP in pair countries. So it's clear that there is a short fall there and given the limited resources of government, government alone cannot provide the financial outlays needed to meet the very huge infrastructure deficits there is and the needs of the economy. So it's imperative that we revert to the use of the activities of public private partnerships to promote infrastructure development and this approach itself requires clear and consistent guidelines for public private partnership arrangements and investor opportunities. This is why after several years of relative ambiguity I think now the point where the government has introduced by way of a policy secular rules that clearly stipulate the respective rules and responsibilities of the bureau of public enterprises and they infrastructure concession regulatory condition the ICRC with regard to PPP arrangements. I'm sure that there are several who had made who had complained about the lack of clarity between the roles in the roles of these two in the roles of these two agencies but the policy is now that the BPE that's the Bureau of Public Enterprises will be responsible for the concession of public enterprises and infrastructure that are already listed in the first and second schedules of the Public Enterprises Act. It will also act that is the BPE on behalf of the federal government as the counterparty on all infrastructure projects being developed on the PPP basis whilst the ICRC will be the regulatory agency for PPP transactions with powers to inspect, to supervise and monitor the projects and processes in order to ensure compliance with relevant laws policies and regulations. So I think the clarity brought about by this new framework will give comfort to interested private partners and incentivize their participation in the exciting new opportunities that are bound in Nigeria. An effective demonstration of the PPP model is a success of our tax credit initiative especially for road construction. Today several road projects that may have presented funding difficulties for the government have been done under a scheme that allows private entities especially private entities than corporate organizations in Nigeria to build wild government for bears of taxes they would have paid to the extent of their financial output from infrastructure. So what this means is that if a private entity is prepared to build or to participate in the building of a government infrastructure such a private entity will get a tax related tax credit for the amount of money spent you know because these are and this would have to go through the normal approvals and all that and this is proved to be very successful. For example today the NNNG the Nigerian-required natural gas project is building the Bodo Bonny bridge road and bridge and this is a huge project almost 200 billion Naira and it's building it on that tax credit basis. Also Dangute built the Obajama Kaba road in Kogi state on that basis and is currently doing the Apapa Omoronshoki road in Lagos also on this tax credit basis. Furthermore the federal government through the central bank of Nigeria and the NSIA and the African Finance Corporation among others are collaborating to establish a 15 trillion infrastructure fund under the auspices of an infrastructure and I'm sure that from the CDN's CDN governor's speech a moment ago we heard a bit about the workings of the infrastructure but this for us is that this for us is a very exciting possibility and there are so many and we think that this opens several doors for infrastructure investment in Nigeria. We believe that given the credibility of the app doors I mean that is CBN, NSIA, AFC and the quantum of resources that will be deployed the infra core will make a major contribution to meeting the infrastructure needs of the Nigerian economy while promoting public private partnerships. So as I close let me show you that the federal government of Nigeria is strongly committed to this approach to national economic development and we consider it an important duty to create their living environment for the required and much needed investment influence. So we invite all investors from within Nigeria as well as our foreign partners, financial institutions and international investment community to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the Nigerian economy. So it's now my very special pleasure and privilege to declare these investors seminar open. Thank you very much.