Meanwhile, the stakeholders have said that negative perception and developments are affecting the country’s stability and quality of investment potentials.
The Nigeria Investment Gateway (NIG), said the expected $50 billion Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) would be a yearly investment through its exclusive funding partners.
The Group Executive Director of NIG, Femi Omotuyi, while speaking at the Second Edition of the Investment Destination Nigeria CEO business summit in Abuja, noted that the organisation is engaged in promoting Nigeria as a prime destination for business and investment.
Omotuyi said the organisation had from November last year to July this year, attracted $4billion FDI through its group of funding partners.
“We deal with projects and businesses that require FDI. We help businesses facilitate funding because we have a group of funding partners. The kind of investment we are looking for are projects that must be bankable, credible and infrastructural base.
“This year is targeted for CEOs who have businesses on the ground already. Annually, we target to facilitate foreign direct portfolio of about $50 billion dollars into Nigeria.
“We have already received $4billion into the agriculture, oil and power sector. For instance, in agriculture, we have a fertiliser company that would be ready soon, a $1.5 billion solar power plant and we are also funding six modular refineries.”
Also speaking at the event, Tonye Isokariari, an advisor with ACIOE, stressed the need to encourage FDI through positive projection of the country’s image.
“We need to clean up the image of the country by setting the right priority. We can do this by amplifying the good things Nigerians are doing instead of promoting bad news.
“To attract FDI, Nigerians must ensure that they adhere to all the necessary laws of the land by doing proper registration of their businesses, getting a legal representative and not cutting corners.
“We must, therefore, put our house in order because if an investor sees that our home is not in order, he or she might run away,” he said.
Similarly, the Managing Director of Vivacity PR, Kemi Areola, observed that bad news has a direct impact on FDI, as investors perceive corruption and insecurity as an impediment to investment.
“We all must stand up and project Nigeria in a good light. It is natural that bad news travels faster than good ones but we need not be quick in sharing negative news concerning our country because it has a direct impact on FDI. We can only convince investors to come to Nigeria through the positive projection of our image,” Areola said.
An entrepreneur development coach and Chief Executive Officer of House of Merola, Madame Merola, said the current system and structure in place is a great impediment in attracting FDI into the country.
“We need to change our mindset on how we see things in the country by displaying a high level of patience. Most businesses do not have structure and we do not have good system in place to get investors in.
“We need to submit ourselves to people who can teach us about having the right structure. If you don’t have a system in place, businesses would not grow.
“Besides the economic issues, which government plays major roles in, we need to take personal responsibility of all that we do as a nation,” she said.
No comments:
Post a Comment