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Nigeria Most Attractive Investment Destination in Africa – World Bank

By on August 10, 2012

Nigeria has been named the most attractive investment destination in Africa by the World Bank. The Country Director of World Bank, Nigeria, Ms Francoise Marie-Nelly disclosed this yesterday at the launch of the World Bank’s Investment Climate Assessment (ICA) report in Abuja.

She said, “Nigeria has the most attractive environment for investment because Nigeria is a large market in the continent; it is the second largest economy in the continent. It is a market that any investor cannot ignore with over 160 million people and a gateway to ECOWAS. For me, while we say the country’s current investment climate could be better in terms of providing electricity, access to finance and other things, you should also look at the huge opportunities for investment in Nigeria.

She added, ““The basic lesson from the World Bank Assessment Report titled, ‘Nigeria, an Assessment of the Investment Climate in 26 States’, is that there are critical constraints in Nigeria that impede the development of the non-oil sector. Some of the critical issues include electricity, which affects the productivity and competitiveness of enterprises. However, the labour cost in Nigeria is actually lower than most of Nigeria’s competitors such as Brazil and South Africa. So, there is need for Nigeria to address some of the constraints in order to take advantage of the huge investment opportunities that exist in the country.”

Minister for Trade and Investment, Segun Aganga, spoke on “Reforming the Nigeria’s Investment Climate.

The technocrat said, “The performance of Nigeria on the recent report issued by United Nations Conference on Trade and Development about the global investment flow across the world indicated that investment flow globally has increased by 16 per cent.

“It said that the flow to Africa has come down by one or two per cent because of the war in Egypt, Libya and the others.”

“But what is important to us is that the investment flow to Nigeria has gone up by 46 per cent to N8.9bn,’’ he added.