If government can address some of the barriers to trade, improve infrastructure and grant businesses some relief in terms of tax holidays, it would not have problems attracting the right form of investments into the country, the President of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote has advised.

According to him, high cost of commodities and fuel prices, a squeeze on foreign aid, and falling diaspora remittances have worsened the nation’s precarious economic situation, thus necessitating the need to think out of the box to get out of the woods.

Indeed, Dangote canvassed for the removal by government, of some of the barriers that hinder the growth of the non-oil sector. One of the ways according to him is for the Government to create an enabling environment that will encourage both local and foreign investors to set up businesses by granting tax holidays, improving the state of infrastructure in the country, and providing more access to credit facilities.
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Dangote, while delivering a paper on ‘Promotion of local manufacturing and poverty reduction in Nigeria: The private sector experience and policy options’ at the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPPS), Kuru, Jos, Plateau said that the present economic situation was unacceptable to him given Nigeria’s abundant resources.

He lamented saying: “It is a curious paradox that Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer, and the largest economy on the continent, also has one of the highest levels of poverty. It is estimated that more than 100 million out of a population of 187 million Nigerians, live below the poverty line.”

“The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) should step up its interventions in the area of improving funding for small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs). All these will create jobs and raise the standard of living of the people”.

Dangote explained that unemployment arose basically because job opportunities were not being created fast enough to match the ever-increasing work force attributing this to the effects of many years of de-industrialisation in the country.

“Retrenchment both in the public service and the private sector also continue to exacerbate the unemployment crises”, he added.Proffering ways out of recession, Dangote urged policy makers to identify priority areas for job creation.

“Some of these areas include micro, small and medium scale enterprises (MSMEs), agriculture and agro-allied industries, manufacturing, entertainment and vocational skills. I believe we can create new opportunities for MSMEs by linking them up with larger enterprises, through industry clusters.

“Since a large number of employers in the MSMEs sector are informal family-owned businesses, they can be trained to become more proficient through various capacity building initiatives”, he stated. Dangote noted that Nigeria’s large population offers incentives for manufacturers and service providers.

“Nigeria also has abundant natural resources. All these make Nigeria a country that offers one of the highest returns on investment in the world, which is attractive to investors. The high volume of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) that has been flowing into Nigeria in recent years, attests to this fact. South African companies such as MTN Nigeria, Shoprite and Multichoice, have taken advantage of our huge population to do business with us and they are today, reaping the dividends.”