President Muhammadu Buhari says he will try his best within the remaining time he has in office as the leader of Nigeria, to ensure that the country’s investment drive is given the needed boost.
The Executive Secretary of Nigeria Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC), Saratu Umar revealed this to State House Correspondents, after she met with President Buhari on Friday.
According to her, the President said the NIPC is equally poised to woo more investors into the Nigerian domain because of the policies of government that makes it easy for investors to do business in any part of the country.
“The major takeaway from my meeting with the President is support; supporting the drive to strengthen the investment drive of Nigeria and he’s willing within the time, he is still here as President of Nigeria to do the best he can to ensure the country’s investment drive is given a lot of traction.
“So I’m very encouraged and I’ve been given a lot of energy now, to continue what we’re doing at the Commission that would help the investment promotion drives of Nigeria. As you know, we have the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement Area now in force and the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) will now try to locate anywhere on the African continent as a signatory to this agreement,” she said.
Mrs Umar stressed that the Commission will further simplify import substitution, so as to conserve foreign exchange, in order to boost the value of Nigeria’s currency.
Read Also:NIPC launches electronic one-stop investment centre
“So the aim for us as a nation is to ensure that we channel FDI to Nigeria, so that we can facilitate import substitution, because when we facilitate import substitution, we will be able to conserve Forex and then also channel investments into the export sectors of the country.
“Because when we’re able to facilitate exports, we’ll be able to generate more foreign exchange. And we all do know also there’s a challenge with foreign exchange supplying everything we believe once we do that, the place of import substitution and forex generation will also help the value of the naira and make life easier for Nigerians. And also once we’re able to bring an investment to different sectors of the economy. Some of the reliance we’ve had on debt will be reduced,” she added.
She said she was in the State House on a routine visit, to brief him on the activities of the NIPC.
“I came here to brief Mr President on the different initiatives the Commission is handling at the moment. As you know, the President is the Chief Investment promoter of the nation. So he needs to have a briefing on the investment ecosystem, as well as what plans we have going ahead to revamp the investment drive of Nigeria,” she said.
