The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Oil and Gas Free Trade Zones Authority, OGFZA, Mr Umana Umana says the Authority has attracted foreign direct investment worth $16.6bn into the Nigerian economy within year 2001 to 2020.
Mr. Umana who gave the figure during a chat with Journalists in Abuja noted that during the same period, the Authority also attracted the sum of N255.33bn local investments into the country.
He stated that between January and May this year, the sum of N9.41bn has been generated as revenue by OGFZA through the free trade zones.
While giving a breakdown of the revenue, he revealed that N2.1bn was generated in January, while February, March, April and May had N1.45bn, N4.39bn, N1bn and N453.98m respectively.
The OGFZA Boss, also said within the last few years, there has been great improvement in the operations of the free zones adding that this was achieved through dedicated leadership as well as the commitment and exceptional quality of members of staff of the Authority.
Mr Umana stated that this had resulted in the huge interests by both local and foreign investors in the zones while explaining that currently, there are about N6.1bn investments being expected to materialize in the Liberty Oil and Gas Free Zone.
According to him “To grow investment also meant looking at the structures within our zones because as I said you can only attract Foreign Direct Investment if you are globally competitive.”
“We took a number of steps, we reviewed our standard of operation, we came out with timeline for delivery of our services, for example, in the past we did not have a specific timeline for renewal of license or to reissue new licenses or even to process cargos.”
“We came up with specific timelines – we say for example that we will take only 48 hours to clear cargos, if the cargos where consigned in Free Zones. It will take seven days to renew license when all the the requirements have been met and it will take 21 days to issue a new license and when all the requirements have been met,” he added.
The Managing Director said between 2005 and 2015, the authority created 40,508 direct jobs and indirect jobs with conservative estimate at about 160,000 noting that investments have been able to unlock many direct and indirect jobs.
He said, “This incentives are applied for activities within zones meaning that when they move items from the zone to any other place all the taxes will be applied.”
“Number of individuals that have been trained by expertise and various companies that come in, the actual figure from 2010-2020 was 35,170.”
Hauwa Abu
