Governor Akinwunmi Ambode yesterday said Lagos State had so far received more Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) in the last 16 months than what it achieved in the last 10 years.

Ambode spoke yesterday when he featured at the maiden edition of Lagos Global on TV, a programme aimed to keep the world abreast of not just the giant strides of the state government but also at driving investment and facilitating ease of doing business in the state.

He said: “When I won the election, one of my priorities was to see how to improve on the ease of doing business in Lagos and I also believe that we needed to carry out some kind of public sector reforms to drive the vision which we had actually set for ourselves and we needed to also have a kind of structure and institutional framework that would drive the vision.
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“The vision is very simple: we want a safer, cleaner and a more prosperous Lagos and one of the structures would be if we want to tackle the issue of bureaucracy in the civil service, we needed to have a 24/7 one-stop shop office where we can drive investment, especially where our businessmen can actually walk into and get everything that they need. In going about that, we decided to come up with the office of oversees affairs and investment, otherwise known as Lagos Global.”

The governor, who said there has been massive investment to improve the security structure, thereby creating more job opportunities for the people, said the reforms in the transport sector had brought about reduction in travel time, which has made Lagosians to be more productive.

He said that his administration has also deployed technology to bring about seamless service delivery and that the government was working on scaling up the identity card scheme for data, economic and financial planning, aside the N25 billion Employment Trust Fund (ETF) aimed at empowering entrepreneurs.

Meanwhile, Special Adviser to the Governor on Overseas Affairs and Investments, Prof. Ademola Abass, said part of the mandate of his office is to bring in FDI into Lagos and also investment generated within the country.