Home Investment Opportunities Trade Leads Sectors States Events News Feature Articles Incentives Legal & Regulatory Doing Business in Nigeria About TradeInvestNigeria Advertising Information Contact TradeInvestNigeria Site Guide Related Websites

Lagos Governor woos investors in South Africa
TradeInvestNigeria
Posted on: Thu, 05 Jun 2008

Lagos State Governor, Mr Babatunde Raji Fashola on Wednesday said Lagos remains the 'face of Nigeria business' as he wooed foreign investors to explore the abundance of investor-friendly opportunities in the state.

Speaking with newsmen at the South Africa – Nigeria Business Forum attended by both the Nigerian and South African Presidents in Cape Town, South Africa, he said "there is a huge return on investment opportunity of as high as 30%".

The Governor, who allayed the fears of would-be investors disclosed that Lagos being a business-friendly government, has a strong judiciary and an emerging arbitration practice and centre that enables disputes to be resolved without going through the unnecessary long-drawn legal intricacies.

"There is legislation in support of private sector participation on a large scale," he said and added that  "Lagos has passed the Public Private Partnership (PPP)  law that enables the private sector to engage in a seamless manner."

He said to encourage business-inflow without going through the usual administrative tapestry, "we are breaking down that institutional procedure that has limited the engagement of business opportunities. We are rapidly formalising the informal sector of the Lagos economy through the enterprise registration procedure in our ministry of commerce and industry. The commitment of our government to support enterprise and growth is a major driver that would create opportunities in so many diverse sectors of the Lagos economy."

Fashola further said his administration had similarly addressed the infrastructural decay of the state "not because we want to build infrastructure but because we realised that the infrastructure that supported Lagos State for the last 30 years have largely been the same."

"Indeed, while the infrastructure has not grown, the population has grown from about 3 million to over 17.87 million and growing at an average rate of 5% per annum."

"We realise that the growing population requires commensurate infrastructure in terms of schools, hospitals, railway transportation, malls, markets and so many others especially as Lagos is largely a trading economy and financial services centre and therefore, all these areas I have mentioned, are areas where there are huge opportunities for investment," he said.

On power generation, the Governor said "what we are waiting for is the conclusion of the privatisation of the power sector and we will be ready.

"But as a state, we are taking some initiatives to strengthen capacity to respond to the distributive sector of the economy wherever it is good, because that really is the business end of the sector," he said.

Fashola added that "it is the sector that brings the power into homes, that brings it into the companies and into the industries," noting that "what we are doing now is investing in the capacity to produce transformers, meters, and all of those components that assist the distributive area of the power sector".

Although, he quickly acknowledged the limitation of state government in power generation, he disclosed that "in terms of production of power, we as a government previously engaged by putting together the AES/IPP power initiative in Egbin in Ikorodu.

"At this moment we are aware of offers for the concesssioning of the power plants in the country but, it is inevitable for us to wait for the Federal Government because the Federal Government is in the process of unbundling the private sector.

"Until clear directive policy decisions are made, we will have a situation that even when the power is generated and thrown into the national grid we do not control the distributive benefits. It must however be mentioned that the Federal Government has taken some positive steps especially with regard to appropriate pricing for gas and its domestic use which is critical to the power sector.'' Fashola said.

He however, proffered that "I think that the strategy for power development is to focus on the areas of commercial centres first and then scale up to the less viable areas as a social service just the same way that we started with telecommunications".