Edo State Investment Promotion Office has attracted $2.5 billion investment in seven years- MD

Development and finance expert, Kelvin Uwaibi, is the Managing Director of Edo State Investment Promotion Office (ESIPO). He speaks with a group of journalists including ‘SUYI AYODELE, REGIONAL EDITOR, SOUTH-SOUTH AND SOUTH-EAST on the coordinating efforts of ESIPO in developing and promoting investments across the state.

How far has your state gone in the drive to bring investments to the state? 

It’s been a very interesting journey for us as a state. If we recall Edo before now was seen as a student and civil service state but that is changing as a lot of investors have come into the state both domestic and foreign investors. When we started, one of the things we did was to engage existing investors, we wanted to know their pain points and areas that we could support. I do recall one of the meetings we had. They were kind of surprised, they had said, wow! Government, you’re interested in us?  They didn’t quite believe it, and we informed them that we were doing things differently, that we wanted to see how we could support them as a government, and that opened the space for conversations, dialogue and policy modifications to suit the business environment. We also undertook policy reforms. If you recall, in January 2017 [the governor] prohibited land grabbing in the state, which was a major challenge for investors. As we always say, the governor is the chief investment officer of the state and as we speak, we can tell you that we have attracted in the last seven years $2.5 billion in both domestic and foreign investments.

In terms of the ease of doing business, what other incentives are in place to attract these investors?

First and foremost, we talk about law and order, just being disciplined you know it has its own ripple effect and it is what we have been working on in the state in terms of law and order. Planning is also very important. When we came on board, we had six thematic pillars; one of it was the economic revolution. So, in trying to do that, we were also looking at areas like the justice system. So, part of what we did was to come up with what we call the Small Claims Court. The Small Claims Court is a court where when there are civil disputes, you can go there and represent yourself. One other very important thing was you cannot talk about investments or investors coming in without having power. Edo State was one and I think the only state at that point that came up with the electricity law. It was two weeks after we had passed our law that the National Assembly passed the law at the national level. What that had done for us was that we were looking at how as a state we could support businesses. As we speak Edo State generates over 1, 000 megawatts of power through Azura, Ossiomo and others. Most of our government buildings are being powered by Ossiomo and the large businesses are also being connected.

Support for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises in the state?

Part of what we had done was to come up with clustering, that is come up with a production centre because it is imperative that when you want to lower the cost for small businesses you now need to put them in a cluster where they can access more services like water, power, and good roads in a particular environment and the businesses will all be located in that environment. Presently, that is what we have done. We have done it successfully in Edo South and we are now expanding to Edo Central and Edo North. Also, for us, taxation is a big issue for investors, so one of the things that we have been able to do and is still an ongoing process, is what we call tax harmonisation. Because what the investment promotion office does really is that we work very closely as facilitators to ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs), ensuring that we can deliver efficient and effective services to businesses and the public. We have worked as a team, and we have been able to act with synergy in most of the policy areas in terms of driving the business environment and ease of doing business.

What has been the level of confidence with business owners and synergy with other agencies?

We don’t work alone; we work with sister agencies, so I’ll quickly mention them. We have the Ministry of Business, Trade and Cooperatives; we have EdoJobs, which has to do with skills up scaling. What we have done really is to synergise, we really deal with what we call the large corporates, the large businesses, but we started having that very close knitted synergy because we discovered that a lot of the large businesses that come in have what we call auxiliaries. They want to be able to get vendors and we want our small businesses to be beneficiaries of such and not maybe you find a situation where they need a vendor to do some jobs for them, they have to go to Lagos. So, we started working towards building the capabilities of our vendors here, our businesses in Edo State so that they can also serve the large businesses. So, coming to your question, what have we done? What we have also done is to have constant engagements with the private sector.

We will ensure that for the private sector, we have a listening ear in what they have to say to us and their pain point is very important to us. We had also partnered at some point with the Bank of Industry (BOI) to provide access to finance, but I can tell you that most times that the challenge with the MSMEs may not always be finance.

In spite of what you have listed, it appears the people are not aware of the business opportunities you enumerated.

Talking about opening the space as you have mentioned, for us it is engagement, engagement, and engagement. We are very close with what we call the business management organisations. What I mean is the Manufacturer Association of Nigeria, the Benin Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (BENCCIMA), Edo industrialists, and export clusters. We are constantly synergising and constantly brainstorming on how to ensure that Edo is that preferred investment destination and sincerely it has been a good one. I must confess now, because you find a situation where businesses now have so much confidence that when they have issues, they just call us immediately. They see us as partners to provide solutions to the issues, so they don’t see themselves as complaining to the government anymore. It’s like they know that our doors are open, they know that they have access to us, we can have conversations on how to resolve any issue at all and that has been working very well. All these have made Edo a preferred destination for investors.

First and foremost, we have a young population and even the developed economic climates right now are battling with an aged population. It means that you can have a sustainable workforce that will make your business expand. A lot of the development companies are grappling with that issue right now. We don’t suffer that, in Edo State, 60 to 70 percent of the population is between the ages of 15 to about 40/45 and so that gives us a very good opportunity as a state. We are a transit hub, as recent analysis with our development partners shows that within a 400-kilometre radius you have about 70 million people that you can reach out of the 200 million plus people that is the population of Nigeria. What that means is that you have huge access to the market and most of the infrastructure; seaports are within that 400-kilometre radius. Our climate is most conducive for agricultural products.

Also, as a state, one very important thing that is for investors and businesses is the political will. Edo enjoys the political will; I can tell you that we are investors’ friendly.

His Excellency, Governor Godwin Obaseki, once he hears any issue about businesses, he wants to make sure that it is resolved immediately. Edo also has a huge Diaspora community and that helps us a lot in terms of when you are looking at access to market also, because they support a lot of things that we do here as a state. Then we have natural resources, Edo has the highest onshore gas in the country. We are also blessed with minerals, limestone and we have gold in Edo and we have a beautiful culture. So, most times before investors come into any environment they come as tourists. Edo has a very rich culture, a culture that dates back into the centuries and the people are very accommodating.

How sustainable are all these initiatives after the Obaseki administration?

We are not winding down, but we are finishing strong. We are not winding down as government is continuous. We are only transiting, so it’s like handing the baton over. We want to hand the baton in a very strong manner so that even the person that will take that baton the energy that would go into that person, even though if he was weak, he would start to run. So, for us, this is even a very important period, the energy is twice what you saw in 2016 because it’s for the Edo people. Everything we’re talking about is institutionalisation, it’s not about one person. It’s not about the governor. So, we need to think about Edo and in doing so, the people are the sustainability. We need to ensure that whatever we have gained, we build on it because what you’re seeing is foundational. We have put everything in place; we’re still putting building blocks in place to ensure that Edo people can live comfortably and go about their businesses comfortably. That’s what is more important. And when you are doing business, you can do it in a profitable manner. So, for us, the people are part of what will create that sustainability you are speaking about and if you have been able to enjoy certain resources and someone else comes and says you cannot enjoy those resources, he may need to give a serious explanation why you cannot enjoy those resources.

So far, what has been the level of foreign direct inflow into the state economy?

In the last seven years we have attracted over $2.5 billion, verifiable in domestic investment and foreign direct investments. We have changed the way we were thinking about FDIs because before now we were big on pushing FDI’s. We said no, we have investors, local investors in Lagos, Port Harcourt, Abuja, and all of that. We have Nigerians that are just waiting for you to tell them where they should put their funds. So, we changed the strategy and started pursuing DDIs (Direct Domestic Investment) at 70 percent and FDI’s at 30 percent. We need to be creative; we are in an age right now talking about evolution and all of that.  We need to be creative in the way we are looking at all these indices because for some of us, when I hear, oh, you are using just capital importation to look at FDI’s coming in, I laugh because business has gone past capital importation. Most of the funds that have been used to do all of these businesses you will not find under that capital importation, and this is me just being sincere because we need to first be Nigerians.

READ ALSO FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE 

• Israeli-Palestinian crisis: Any implications for Nigeria?

• Tinubu appoints Bayo Onanuga as Special Adviser

• Coroner summons Naira Marley, two others over Mohbad’s death

• Davido, Chioma step out with newborn twins

• NOTES FROM ATLANTA: Neither Tinubu nor Atiku forged credentials with INEC

• PRESSTIME PODCAST: Digital Media, social media, where do we draw the line

• Ondo Assembly suspends impeachment of deputy gov Aiyedatiwa

• EDITORIAL: The Kebbi boat disaster