Oyo govt, Ibadan Chamber of Commerce partner on enabling business environment

IN a bid to ensure an enabling environment for business growth, attraction of more foreign investors to the state and increase in revenue base, the Oyo State government has expressed its readiness to work closely with the Ibadan Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture, which is an umbrella body of Organised Private Sector (OPS) in the state.

This was made known by the Executive Assistant to the governor of Oyo State on Bureau of Investment Promotion (BIP) and Public-Private Partnerships (PPP), Mr Segun Ogunwuyi, when he paid a courtesy visit to the Ibadan Chamber of Commerce House, in Ibadan, on Tuesday.

He pointed out that: “We do not only want to create an avenue and atmosphere whereby foreign and local investors can come into Oyo State. We want to have an Oyo State that would not be going to Abuja to beg for the release of monthly allocation from the Federal Government.

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“We are hoping to be very close to Lagos when it comes to self-sustainability so that at least we would be confident that Oyo State can stand on its own without any federal allocation. And to do that, we need the Organised Private Sectors.”

Ogunwuyi, while making reference to Governor Seyi Mkainde’s recent trip to Botswana, said: “I happen to be on that trip and what that trip told me was that this governor of Oyo State is a man that even when he was yet to be officially inaugurated, he can still bring out money from personal purse and go elsewhere to see how things are done in different clime.

“We went there, we saw why the Botswana team came to Nigeria. I believe an engagement is still ongoing in terms of consultation and that the ministries are doing MoU to be able to engage the Botswana government.

“What I gathered from the Botswana trip is that they are more interested in private sector engagement and not necessarily government to government engagement and that was why the chamber of commerce in Botswana came.”

He stressed that he prefers private sector engagement whereby the government creates an enabling business environment, saying that is also the thinking of the governor.

“When we say Public-Private Partnership (PPP), we are not really looking into the government having 70 or 80 per cent of the business while the private sector has 20 per cent because the government has no business in business. It should only create an enabling environment for businesses to thrive,” he concluded.

Speaking with the Tribune Online shortly after the meeting, President, Ibadan Chamber of Commerce, Mr Ismaila Alapa, assured the state government that the chamber is fully ready to support the present administration in the state, under the leadership of His Excellency, governor Seyi Makinde, to succeed in all its cardinal programmes capable of making the economy an envy to others.