The Director-General, Bureau of Public Enterprises, Alex Okoh, has said that the bureau plans to carry out 19 transactions this year.

He made this known when he received members of the Senate Committee on Privatisation and Commercialisation led by its Chairman, Theodore Orji, who were on an oversight visit to the bureau.

The BPE boss in a statement issued in Abuja on Friday said the transactions would be carried out in health, education, energy and other sectors of the Nigerian economy.

He said the transactions were expected to impact on the economy, especially in the areas of infrastructure development, improved power generation and supply, food security and job creation.

Okoh expressed the bureau’s willingness to work closely with members of the committee to ensure that the BPE would deliver on its mandate for the benefit of the nation.

He listed some of the challenges facing the privatisation agency in the discharge of its mandate to include budgetary constraints, non- enactment of some important reform bills such as the National Transport Commission Bill and the Roads Bill.

The BPE boss also identified overlapping mandate between the bureau and the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission on concession and public private partnership projects and economic policy as an additional challenge to the bureau.

Responding, Orji expressed delight at the oversight visit, stating that the committee had been anxious to visit the bureau to know about privatisation and other reform activities of the BPE.

He pledged the committee’s commitment to work with the bureau, after the lawmakers were briefed about the challenges confronting the BPE.

Orji said the partnership would help the bureau overcome the challenges mitigating the privatisation programme of the Federal Government and deliver the benefits to the Nigerian populace.