Executive Secretary and Chief Executive of Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC), Mr. Mustafa Bello, has advanced reasons why Nigeria is increasingly becoming a haven for foreign investors within and outside the African continent.
Bello made this remark when the Chief Executive of Goldstock Chambers, Mr. Lyold Aneke, visited him to solicit the support of NIPC in the launch of the Nigerian Investment Project scheduled for October 8th.
He said: “Studies conducted have shown that when compared with other countries, Nigeria offers a relatively higher return on investment and therefore making it an investors’ destination.
“On weekly basis, our commission receives about 15 applications from investors who want to do businesses in Nigeria.”
The NIPC chief executive, who was represented by the Director of Administration and Finance in the commission, Mr. Stephen Amase, however, admitted that infrastructural bottlenecks such as lack of power supply and good network of roads, which government is currently addressing impedes business development.
According to him, the Federal Government had put place some attractive incentives for the stimulation of businesses such as the 100 per cent repatriation of profits and dividends by investors through authorized dealers in freely convertible currency and tax holidays to intending investors.
He said the commission was willing to support genuine organisations which would assist in opening up the country’s vast economic potentials to foreign investors.
One of the mandates of NIPC, he said, was identifying these vast potentials and also promoting them to the outside world.
He acknowledged the fact that these promotions had become imperative because Nigeria is a country that is still in transition and therefore requires the technical knowhow and capital from the outside world.
Bello commended Goldstock for its initiative in coming up with this novel project, which he said would meaningfully accelerate the development of the economy by opening the country’s vast resources using nigeriastate.net.
He said the provision of detailed information on Nigeria’s resources to the outside world would go a long way in helping the commission deliver on its mandate, adding that all the information needed by potential investors would have been made available by Goldstock on its website.
In his remark, Aneke said the fall in Nigeria’s standing in the World Bank’s business ranking for 2010 underscored the desperate need for a website to expose all the available potential resources within the economy to the international community.
At the completion of the project, Aneke said Nigeria’s quest to be among the top 20 developed countries in the world by 2020 would have been attained.
According to him, the site would aid Nigeria in attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), which would take the form of funds and human knowledge pertinent to our society.
