The Nigeria Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC) has restated its commitment toward promoting Nigeria’s investment opportunities.
NIPC Director of Strategic Communication, Mr Emeka Offor said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.
Offor was reacting to allegations of mismanagement, poor working conditions, and welfare as well as deviation from NIPC core investment promotion mandates by its management by the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN), NIPC chapter.
The union had embarked on a peaceful protest on Thursday calling for the removal of the Executive Secretary, Yewande Sadiku.
Offor, while listing some recent achievements of NIPC in line with its mandate, said it had been meeting its mandate which centred on encouraging, promoting and coordinating investment in Nigeria.
“The principal functions are: to project attractive investment image, investment promotion, investment facilitation and policy advocacy.
“NIPC has been focused on meeting its mandate,” the director said.
Offor also mentioned some of its recent achievements as moving NIPC from reactive to proactive mandate delivery and publishing of NIPC Intelligence newsletter daily since 2017, as well as promote Nigeria’s investment opportunities.
He said the Commission published a compendium of investment incentives for the first time in 2017 for prospective investors to appreciate fiscal incentives in Nigeria’s tax laws.
According to him, the Committee has revised process for pioneer status incentives, thereby, making it less cumbersome and transparent to investors.
He said it also inaugurated an online investment guide (iGuide Nigeria) which provides up-to-date information on doing business in Nigeria.
Offor added that the commission initiated the reform of Nigeria’s Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) to attract ‘RIBS’ investment including validated assessment of Nigeria’s BIT.
According to him, its new model BIT has been validated by United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), a UN body.
He said the commission hosted Direct Investment Summit Nigeria 2018 to match investment with opportunities and encourage Nigerians to invest in their own country.
Offor said the Commission was striving to certify and prepare states to receive investors as part of its coordination function.
“Others include investment opportunity profiling to improve the visibility of investable opportunities in Nigeria and match-make investors and One-Stop Investment Centre (OSIC) Lab for speedy and transparent resolution of investors complaints,” he added.
Offor further said that it had also revamped its website for investment tracking, adding that NIPC started tracking investment in 2017.
On staff welfare, he said the evidence of management’s commitment was an increase in the expenditure on staff welfare from 5.91 per cent in 2016 to 45.45 per cent of the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) in 2020. (NAN)
