Manufacturers' responses to infrastructure deficiencies in Nigeria: private alternatives and policy options

Firstly, documents how infrastructural deficiencies affect manufacturing firms of different sizes in different regions. The authors describe how firms respond to the deficiencies, identify the costs of these responses, and estimate the extent of private cost as a measure of the willingness of firms to pay for reliable services. Based on these observations, alternative policy options are offered for improving infrastructure provisions in Nigeria. These policy options provide alternatives between the two extremes of the non-performing public sector and private provision by individual manufacturers. The policy options discussed include: i) regulatory changes for enabling fuller utilization of existing private provision capacities, for example, by allowing the sale of excess private power supply; ii) private sector participation in selected infrastructure support activities, such as production, distribution, maintenance, metering or revenue collection; and iii) alternative pricing and tariff strategies which exploit observed variations in private provisions by firm size and location. -from Authors