Lead Capital Wins Exchange Bid

BY COBHAM NSA (ABUJA)
The Federal Government’s moves to reposition the Nigeria Commodity Exchange (NCEX) for effective service delivery got a boat on Tuesday with Lead Capital Consortium emerging the preferred bidder for Advisory services on the Exchange.
Lead Capital scored 83.1 percent at the financial and technical bid opening to dust PWC and United Capital Consortia came second and third positions with 61.4 percent and 58.3 percent scores respectively.
The firm had submitted a financial bid of Seventy-Six Million, Three Hundred and Four Thousand, Five Hundred Naira (N76,304,500) only to emerge the preferred bidder, subject to the approval of the National Council on Privatisation (NCP) Steering Committee on the NCEX’s revitalisation and the NCP Chairman, Professor Yemi Osinbajo (SAN).
Chairman of the occasion and Acting Director-General, Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), Dr. Vincent Onome Akpotaire said the Federal Government was determined to revamp the nation’s economy based on a well-structured commodity exchange as a catalyst for enhancing the effective and efficient marketing and distribution of agricultural and other commodities.
He said an efficient commodity exchange would serve as a good platform for trading in produce, encourage warehouse receipts systems as a veritable source of cash flows to farmers and other market dealers, thus allowing for competitive and more profitable trade and exchange as opposed to the current status under which off-takers enjoy the larger chunk of market profitability.
He said the current challenges posed by the near-absolute lull in the NCX could be overcome through a well-tailored restructuring and strategic investment programme as envisaged under the ongoing-national Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) investment programme.
Earlier, the Sector Director and Coordinator of the Project Delivery Team (PDT) for the transaction, Mr. Yunana Jackdel Malo said approval by the NCP steering on the NXEC revitalization saw the Secretariat transmitting invitation letters and Request for Proposals (RFPs) to 13 firms randomly selected from the database of key stakeholder agencies of the government. He said the letters requested for Expressions of Interest (EOIs), technical and financial proposals which were to be sent simultaneously in separate sealed envelopes.
In his remarks, Managing Director of NCEX, Mrs. Zaheera Baba-Ari lauded efforts at revitalising the Exchange, saying that it is a new dawn to move framers from subsistence to commercialised farming. She said it would also give a boost to the agricultural sector as commissions would now be paid straight to into the Federal Government Treasury Single Account (TSA) and make agriculture an equal revenue earner as the Oil & Gas sector.