Globalise Nigeria’s Economy To Attract Foreign Investors – Minister

The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr Ibe Kachikwu, has called for the globalisation of the nation’s economy to attract more foreign investors in the country.
The minister made the call in Abuja  Wednesday  while addressing the sixth Sustainability in the Extractive Industries Conference, organised by the CSR-in-Action in Abuja for stakeholders in the extractive industry.
Kachikwu said since 2012 when the conference started, a lot had been achieved and called for the development of the nation’s local economy for global participation.
He called for”the strengthening of our local economy in such a way that it can take advantage of extra border foray and invest in other countries’’.
He said that unless the local economy was robust and strengthened, it could not play an international role and would not attract foreign investors.
According to Kachikwu, to attract investors, the nation needs to build a sufficient and robust infrastructure to enable cost of production to be at lowest level to do business in Nigeria.
He said the infrastructure in the nation’s oil sector for 30 to 40 years had not been sufficiently developed and everything seemed to be in a state of decay.
“So we have a real major challenge in the oil sector for the next five years; so we need to create a five-year Marshal Plan to replace decayed infrastructure in the sector.
“And nowhere is more apparent than like in the refinery sector where we are one of the major OPEC producers and we are still importing bulk of our petroleum products.
“This is because our refinery infrastructure has not been maintained at the same level with other countries such as Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire where 90 per cent of their refineries capacity are working,’’ he said.
He reiterated the need to upgrade the nation’s oil infrastructure, adding that this was not easy now because Nigeria did not save enough during the oil boom and could not do this now because oil price had fallen.
Kachikwu urged the government to provide tax holidays and good enabling environment to encourage local producers, noting that instead of vilifying local producers, Nigerians should commend them to do more.
He added that the key to doing business was finance and there was need to assist our local producers through development finance and by creating necessary financial incentives to help them do their business.