BEVERLY HILLS, August 28, (THEWILL) – President Muhammadu Buhari has assured existing and prospective foreign investors that their investments in Nigeria will be fully secured and protected declaring that Nigeria will be one of the most attractive and easiest places of doing business in the world by 2019.
Speaking at a plenary session on ‘Dialogue with the Private Sector’ at the sixth Tokyo International Conference for African Development (TICAD VI), in Nairobi, Kenya, President Buhari said his administration is implementing policies and measures to create right and enabling environment for business and investors in Nigeria.
“We believe government has a particular responsibility to create right and attractive environment for businesses and economic activities to thrive,” he declared at the session attended by several African leaders, Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, and international business executives
“In furtherance of this vision, we have launched the Presidential Enabling Environment Council, PEEC and Inter-Ministerial Council to oversee the efforts of government to remove various bottlenecks that stifle businesses and economic activities and thereby create economic activities and the right enabling environment and investment climate in Nigeria.
“We are committed to moving up the ranking of the World Bank’s ease of doing business index 20 places in first year and be in the top 100 within the next 3 years.”
The President also met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, on the side-lines of the Conference and outlined several steps taken by his administration to secure the country and ease doing business in Nigeria.
“As a government, we know our responsibility, which is to secure the environment. It is clear to us that lenders won’t fund projects in insecure environments. We realize that we have to secure the country before we can efficiently manage it,” the President said.
“We have provided funds to our Navy to buy new platforms, train and effectively organize the personnel to protect the area. We are looking forward to support from developed nations for satellite surveillance covering the Gulf of Guinea.”
Buhari later revealed that the Federal Government will sustain concrete measures to diversify the economy by devoting more resources to agriculture in the 2017 budget.
“This year, in Nigeria, we started an aggressive farming programme that entails organising farmers into cooperatives in the second and third tier of government,” he told on the margins of the conference.
“We intend to put more resources in our 2017 budget, especially in the procurement of machinery for land clearing, fertilizers, pesticides and training of less-educated farmers, as farm extension instructors.
“We have already registered some success this year in a number of states, we identified some 13 states that will be self-sufficient in rice, wheat and grains before the end of 2018.
“We are very positive that soon we will be able to export these food products. We are also lucky that the farming season in the northern part of the country has been very good and we are expecting a bumper harvest this year.”
Story by David Oputah
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