The Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC) has expressed regrets that the absence of a well-coordinated and monitoring mechanism has for the most part, left the investment community largely in a state of confusion in Nigeria.
The NIPC noted “investment promotion drive of the country is largely fragmented, thereby, depriving us of cohesive leverage we could have achieved if we synergise our efforts and resources.”
The NIPC Executive Secretary, Seratu Umar made the observations in her address at a stakeholders’ engagement forum with State Investment Promotion Agencies in Abuja.
To this effect, she said that the central and strategic role of the NIPC in the coordination of all investment promotion should, therefore, be activated to ensure that the nation’s investment promotion drive is given traction to onboard investments into different sectors of the country in a bid to facilitate economic growth, job creation, import substitution and foreign exchange generation and others.
She added that a well-coordinated ecosystem that ensures complementary national and subnational Investment Promotion Agencies [IPAs] roles are key to avoiding downstream problems for investors across the country.
According to her, “All stakeholders in the investment promotion ecosystem ought to work in synergy and complement our mandates and competences to facilitate a national investment promotion campaign under the National Investment Promotion Master Plan which will also holistically, accommodate investment opportunities at the State levels’’.
She promised that the Commission will enhance its capacity building for investment functionaries at the sub-national levels and create a standardization template for the collection of investment grade project, data, information on business-enabling reforms that will feed into a dashboard to be developed and domicile at the NIPC
In her contribution, the Director-General, Cross River State Investment Promotion Bureau, Rosemary Ekong, said lack of synergy between State IPAs and the NIPC for a long time has become an issue that needs urgent attention for quick resolution necessary for facilitation of the much-needed Foreign Direct Investment [FDIs] to Nigeria.
On his part, the Managing Director, Edo State Investment Promotion Office, Kelvin Uwaibi, urged the NIPC to update its website to enable IPAs to have access to day-to-day information that are necessary for investments’ promotion.
