The
Federal Government, through the Minister of Industry, Trade and
Investment, Okechukwu Enelamah, has said President Muhammadu Buhari is
obsessed with the country’s infrastructure deficit...
This was even as the Minister of Foreign
Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, who represented President Muhammadu Buhari at
the Nigeria-US Business Investment Forum held yesterday in New York on
the sideline of the ongoing 72nd United Nations General Assembly (UNGA),
said the country had in stock, a lot of incentives for foreign
investors.
The incentives, Onyeama stated, were a
much more stable environment, a lot of enabling business initiatives,
one-stop-shop for registration of names for getting passport into the
country and customs clearances.
Other incentives, according to Onyeama,
were a huge market of almost 193 million people, a bigger market with
the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), good governance
and more security.
Speaking during the interactive session, Enelamah said infrastructure was very central to the current administration.
He added that Nigeria is a welcoming
business destination to foreign investors, promising that the Nigeria
the outside world see today would not be the Nigeria of tomorrow. “I
wanted to summarise three or four themes that have been sort of said in
different forms, but I think it is a message that must not be lost to
this audience.
“I think the first one is the centrality
of infrastructure to this government and to just sort of our game plan
for the country. We have a president that is very focused, even obsessed
with the infrastructure deficit and making sure it is addressed.
“I think it is important to note that
because it represents both opportunity for investment, as well as
frankly, for those of you that are strategic in thinking about your
investment, you could almost factor that in, in terms of ease of doing
business, and the enabling environment and the infrastructure we will
inevitably create,” Enelamah said.
Enelamah added that any analyst that
looked upon what is happening in the country, would attest to the fact
that the efforts being made by the government would inevitably change
the infrastructure landscape dramatically.
“And I think anybody who is an analyst,
or anybody who follows Nigeria and looks at all that is going on, I
mean, we have talked about the rails, the concession with GE, the
arrangements with the Chinese over new roads construction, the things
that are going on with the airport concessions that have been announced
worth sharing and all those we are doing with our Aviation Minister and
so on, and the work we are doing with special economic zones, the huge
amount of resources that are going into power, and I think these
efforts, in my considered view, would inevitably change the
infrastructure landscape in Nigeria dramatically,” Enelamah added.
Enelamah further said he was a great
believer that if you do the right thing, you get the result, saying he
does not believe in the so called mystery.
“You just have to assume that if you make
the investment, the investment would be there. If the investment is not
there, then the investment was not made. So, it is not as if like you
can invest in power and there would be no power or you can concession
your airport, bringing world class players and the airports would not be
well run.
“And I say that just to say that the
Nigeria of the future, of the next few years, will be dramatically
different from what you saw in the past and I am fully convinced, fully
persuaded that this would be the legacy of this current government,”
Enelamah declared.
Speaking earlier, Onyeama said all embassies across the world were going to be transformed into business hobs.
Onyeama noted that there were a lot of investors who were ready to do business in the country.
“They realise all the benefits and advantages they have in doing business in Nigeria.
“The returns of investment in Nigeria are
amongst the highest in the world. So, what I took away from here is
that we have the richest country in the world and they are keen to come
into Nigeria,” Onyeama said.
Speaking with Daily Sun, the Founder and
Chief Executive Officer, Atlas Merchant Capital, Bob Diamond, said the
forum was one of a shared feeling.
“There is a shared feeling that in the
last year, a number of things around security, around the economy,
around currency level has improved; the micro environment has improved
and there is a real partnership between the ministries that are here and
the businesses and investors that are here,” Diamond said.
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