BPE February 19, 2018

Transaction Advisers for BOA

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) Consortium has emerged the preferred bidder for advisory services for the Bank of Agriculture (BOA) with a score of 91.1 percent having beaten KPMG Professional Services Consortium which scored 71.9 percent to come second.

At the close of the opening of the financial and technical proposals submitted by prospective advisers for BOA held by the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) on Thursday, February 15, 2018 PWC also submitted a financial bid of Three Hundred and Twenty-Seven Million, Four Hundred and Fifty –Eight Thousand, Two Hundred and Ninety- Seven Naira (N327, 458,297) only to emerge the preferred bidder. However, its emergence is subject to the final approval of the National Council on Privatisation (NCP).

Speaking at the occasion, Director General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), Mr. Alex A. Okoh commended the bidders for demonstrating unalloyed faith in the reform programme of the Federal Government which their participation had strengthened the resolve of the Bureau to see the bidding process to its logical conclusion.

He reiterated that the new vision of the BPE drives on two key pillars re-discovering and repositioning and that given BPE’s rich heritage
of being a professional agency, it needed to rediscover what placed it at the position of vantage prior to the many lean years.Okoh added that his administration had achieved that and moved on to the next stage which is to reposition the Bureau.

“The repositioning entails recovering the essential mandate that the Privatisation and Commercialisation Act bestows upon the Bureau
and how to now get all of the transactions that have been envisaged under that Act, irrespective of the transaction track that they are supposed to follow. In the process of regaining our rightful mandate, the twin issues of integrity and professionalism should be our hallmark.

It ultimately will redefine BPE. The integrity of the transactions that we manage is very important and can never be compromised. And then the professionalism with which we handle the transactions to deliver the best possible outcomes for those enterprises that we are seeking to reform is very, very important. I am proud to say we are making progress in the paths identified”, he noted.

Giving a background to the bidding process, the Director General said subsequent upon the approval of the National Council on
Privatisation (NCP) in September 2016, the BPE commenced the process of procuring a transaction adviser for the restructuring and recapitalisation of the BOA in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Agriculture & Rural Development (FMARD) and Federal Ministry of
Finance (FMF).

“After a painstaking process, the Quality-Cost-Based-System (QCBS) was adopted to ensure quality service delivery by the prospective
advisers at a competitive transaction cost. A letter for submission of expressions of interest (EOIs) was later sent to 13 consortia on Wednesday, 24 May 2017. Nine (9) out of the thirteen (13) shortlisted consortia submitted EOIs at the close of the deadline for the EOIs on Wednesday, 28 June 2017. After evaluation of the EOls, only seven (7) Consortia were issued with the Request for Proposals (RfPs)”, he stated.

Okoh said that at the deadline for the submission of proposals, Monday, 15 January 2018 at 5:00pm local time, the Bureau received
proposals from the seven (7) consortia which two firmsPricewaterhouse Coopers and KPMG Professionals Services scored the minimum 75%. Before the bids were opened, the Director General gave the ground rules as follows:

• Only Candidates who passed the technical evaluation and are invited by the Bureau shall be eligible for the opening of their financial bid;
• The sealed financial proposals of eligible firms shall be opened publicly after being confirmed as intact by the firms;
• The Technical and Financial bids will be equalised;
• The result of equalisation shall be announced; and
• The result is subject to the approval of the National Council on Privatisation.

The Director General while commending the Chairman of the National Council on Privatisation (NCP), Professor Yemi Osinbajo
(SAN) towards the successful conclusion of the transaction, also thanked the bidders that expressed interest for their belief in the
restructuring, recapitalisation and partial privatisation process of the BOA.

Amina Tukur Othman
Head, Public Communications
February 19, 2018