- Says FDI driven by policies
The Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC) said it tracked $8.41billion worth of Investments from 15 projects across eight states. The states include Bayelsa, Lagos, Kano, Nasarawa, Delta, Edo, Bauchi and Akwa Ibom.
At the Q1 NIPC media parley, the Director, Strategic Communications of NIPC, Emeka Ofor, in his presentation said, the sources of the investments into these states are the United kingdom, the United States, India, China, Nigeria and others, while the sectors affected were manufacturing, construction, mining and quarrying, agriculture and electricity.
Ofor stressed that other states in the federation need to wake up with sound investment ideas to attract both local and international investors to help their state more viable and independent without federal allocations.
“Material Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) can only be driven by government policies both at state and federal levels. There is need for bold and coherent policy changes to deepen economic reform to reverse the decline expected in 2020/ 2021.
“The gaps between announcement and actual investments need to be worked on, and a more proactive government approach to investors’ support accross federal and state governments is required to convert announcement to actual investments.”
He cautioned the media against escalating news particularly critical news capable of scaring and driving investors to other climes, saying, “We must not unnecessarily escalate news, let’s try to reduce the tempo because a single reportage may cause damage to to country, investment-wise, so we must be cautious about our reportage,” he added.
