NEPZA: Economic Zones Attracted $364.6m FDIs in 4 Years

James Emejo in Abuja

The Managing Director/Chief Executive, Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority (NEPZA), Prof. Adesoji Adesugba, has disclosed that the country attracted $364.6 million in Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) between 2020 and the first quarter of the year (Q1 2023).

He said $18.4 million was attracted in Q1 alone.

Speaking at an interactive session with journalists, he said if given the necessary support, the scheme could transform the investment landscape within a short time, adding that the foreign capital inflows had led to the creation of over 30,741 jobs in the economy.

He said about $102.93 million was recorded from international exports, while N1.14 trillion came from the domestic market.

Adesugba stressed the need to evolve strategies to industralise the country, create more jobs, and increase productivity.

He said the free zones scheme was the easiest means to achieve industrialisation and remain competitive in the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) regime.

The NEPZA boss said the zone would help enhance the competitiveness of locally manufactured products as well as put an end to dumping in the country and boost employment generation.

He stated that activities in the economic zones “generate direct employment, as of now we have about 170,000 people employed in all our free zones, we have about 55 Free Zones in the country and about 30 of them functional, the others are either at different stages of development or yet to commence development. We also currently have 541 enterprises within these free zones.”

He, however, stressed that although successes had been recorded, more work needed to be done to ensure the free zones are made attractive to investors.

He said, “In China, the Shanghai free zone alone has 55,000 factories and if you look at the population of China compared to Nigeria, we have about 1/5 of China, we haven’t started yet, we need to think out of the box and find out what are we doing right and what we are doing wrong.”

To further promote industrialisation, Adesugba noted that the authority has put in place a system where it can use the stock exchange to raise bonds for some of the companies interested in setting up in Nigeria, pointing out that this arrangement would benefit the country.

He said, “We are also working with the Dubai Stock Exchange, the Nigerian Stock Exchange and Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission to put together the rules within the law to be able to have a special listing of companies in the Free Zone.”

He also disclosed that the authority is working with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to get approval for the offshore banking process in the free zones.