According to the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA), about 245,000 direct jobs and 315,300 indirect jobs were created in the last ten years as a result of the SWF.
Aminu Umar Sadiq, managing director and chief executive officer of NSIA, said this yesterday in Abuja at a media discussion.
He declared that the agency was dedicated to continuing its approach of diversifying its holdings to maximize profits for the nation.
At the end of its 2022 fiscal year, he claims, NSIA’s total assets amounted to N1.02 trillion.
He claimed that the sum represented an increase of 10.5% from the N919.73 billion recorded in 2021.
He claimed that the investment institution’s non-volatile revenue, such as interest income, revenue from infrastructure business, and management fees earned from fiduciary activities, increased by 34.5 percent (N15.7 billion) year over year in the presentation that included the investment institution’s complete 2022 performance report.
According to him, the NSIA’s total comprehensive income was N96.96 billion in 2022, down 34% from N147 billion in 2021. He attributed the reduction to macroeconomic headwinds.
Despite the company’s lower-than-expected profitability, Sadiq said he was still confident in its investment approach and will keep looking for ways to reduce risks and meet its investment goals.
“We are committed to ensuring that Nigeria’s SWF consistently ranks high in the league of state-owned funds in terms of transparency, governance and performance. Our foray into some new terrains underscores our resolve to ensure that optimal returns are generated through responsible investing.”
“For emphasis, we have, on behalf of the present and future generations, expanded our focus sectors to include climate finance, renewable energy, innovation and technology. This is in addition to the priority sectors we have maintained over the years –agriculture, motorways, power, healthcare and gas industrialisation.”
The COVID-19 lockdown in China, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the food and energy crises, supply-chain disruptions, skyrocketing inflation, and monetary tightening, he claimed, were only a few of the unheard-of events that affected the financial markets in the 2022 fiscal year.
“But our well-diversified portfolio continues to provide the resilience to withstand market challenges as evidenced by the results. Against market expectations and internal forecasts, NSIA closed the 2022 financial year with a respectable performance. This result underscores the robustness of our diversified portfolio and the excellent commitment of the team,” he said.
The company’s chief executive stated that while it looks to the future, it is steadfast in its goal to delivering increasing investments in important economic sectors, fostering growth across its funds, and luring outside capital into Nigeria’s infrastructure sector.
The NSIA’s major accomplishments in 2022 were the implementation of specialized Federal Government initiatives as well as core sectors of concentration.
The Presidential Fertilizer Initiative and the Pandagric Novum farm, a partnership between NSIA and Signature Agri Investment for the cultivation of maize and soybeans and connected to a 147,000 metric tons per year capacity poultry feed mill, are two projects in the agriculture sector that fall under this category.
