By Henry Uche, Lagos
The Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC) reports that US$3.95 billion was tracked as investment announcements for Q3 2020. This represents 57% less than the value tracked in the corresponding period in 2019 (US$9.29 billion). The drop in value can be attributed to the impact of COVID-19 and its global economic impact.
Investment newsletter from the commission says revealed that the Commission publishes NIPC Intelligence Newsletter six days a week, and through it, a total of thirteen (13) projects across eight (8) states were tracked. Three of the investment announcements were start-up enterprises in health care delivery, and information and communication technology (software development).
The statement maintained that Kogi State received the largest share of the investments announced with US$1 billion, followed by Lagos State with US$239 million, Ogun State with US$75 million and Cross Rivers State with US$15 million.
On a sector basis, the top destinations were the transportation sector which received (66%), manufacturing (27%) while information and communication, and mining and quarrying received 3% and 2% respectively. Other sectors, agriculture, and human health and social services collectively accounted for the remaining 2%.
On the sources, China accounted for 66% of the investments tracked during the period. The other major sources of the investments tracked were the United Kingdom (28%), domestic investors (4%), and the United States (2%).
According to the newsletter, this Q3 Report is based only on investment announcements cited in NIPC’s Newsletters from July to September 2020; it may not contain exhaustive information on all investment announcements in Nigeria during the period. Nevertheless, the Report gives a sense of investors’ interest in the Nigerian economy. NIPC did not independently verify the authenticity of the investment announcements but is working on tracking the announcements as they progress to actual investments.
