From Abdulrazaq Mungadi, Gombe

The Second Deputy President of the Coalition of the Northern States Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (CONSCCIMA), Dr Bala Muhammad Abubakar, has called on Gombe and other North-eastern states to consider setting-up trade facilitation centres for trade opportunities across the region to flourish and drive development.

According to him, the absence of facilitation centres has been the missing link in harnessing trade opportunities across states in the region and the country. He said, “If we have trade facilitation centres in place, it would help to look at the laws and government’s policies that are unfriendly to the business environment and investment so that there will be a kind of rejig of such policies, amendment of such laws to make their environment very conducive for trading and investment”.

The Second Deputy President stated this in an interview with newsmen at the ongoing Gombe Investment Summit holding in Gombe. He explained that the trade facilitation centres they are advocating for, are to fill the gaps that hinder the smooth movement of goods services and persons from one trading centre to another.

“When we establish trade facilitation centres, apart from filling that gap, the centres will identify the entire investment opportunities that we have in a state and ease the process of marketing them. This is how we need to maximise it.

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“For example, Gombe is establishing an industrial part, that park will not operate optimally and meet the aspirations of the state until they have a functional trade facilitation centre which will make the park operate optimally to the benefit of the economy of the state and the country as a whole. It is very important you can’t do without them,” Dr Bala.

He announced that the trade facilitation centre being established in Bauchi state is completed and set to be commissioned in November.

“So, what is required is for the governments particularly in the North East and the Northern part of the country to have very strong synergy between the government and private sector under the chamber of commerce.

“The most important partnership all over the world is Public Private Partnership (PPP) and the chamber of commerce is the umbrella body of the private sector. If there is this strong synergy between the government and the private sector virtually, they wouldn’t have been having kind of this economic setback that we have been suffering all along in this country,” Dr Bala added.