By Godfrey AKON
The Federal Government has commenced the process of concessioning the two public Free Trade Zones located in Calabar and Kano to private investors.
Managing Director/CEO of Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority, NEPZA, Prof Adesoji Adesugba, disclosed this on Monday while speaking on his 2020-2023 performance to Commerce and Industry Correspondent Association of Nigeria, CICAN, in Abuja.
Adesugba said the process for the concessioning of the zones is being done by the Bureau of Public Enterprises, BPE, adding that earlier attempt to concession the zones was not conclusive.
He expressed hope that the process being restarted with the BPE for the concessioning of Kano and Calabar will be successful to reenergize the free zone by allowing the private sector to manage them.
“Nigeria has two public zones, and that is the one in Kano and the one in Calabar. Recently, government has decided that the authority should spend more time in its regulatory form while the two zones would be concessioned to the private investors.
“The process for the concessioning is being done by the Bureau of Public Enterprises. The earlier attempts to do this was not conclusive and we hope to restart the process with the BPE for the concessioning of Kano and Calabar,” he said.
The NEPZA boss also stressed the need for Nigeria to have a strategy to aggressively industrialize the country to meet local needs, tackle unemployment ang grow the economy.
He added that the urgency of having a strategy of driving industrialization in the country is hinged on the fact that the country’s population is growing at about 5 million per year.
Adesugba said NEPZA needs to review its enabling law which was enacted since in 1992 and had passed second reading in the 9th Assembly to ensure that the 10th National Assembly passes the law within the shortest time.
According to him, the authority has recommended to the government for the presidential approval of Education Free Zones in University of Abuja and Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti, adding that several other universities have also applied for free zones.
While stating that the free trade zones scheme is capable of transforming the industrial space in Nigeria within a short time, he said “Nigeria has a high population, we need to stop dumping products into the country that we can produce locally.
He warned that other countries are setting up free zones in neighboring Binin Republic, Togo and Ghana with Nigeria as their target market, calling on stakeholders to join hands to deal with issues brought up by investors such as issues of duty payment to make them comfortable to invest in the country.
He disclosed that NEPZA is working with Nigeria Customs Service, NCS, to know the actual calculation of the required duty, even as the authority has also agreed to come up with modalities of engaging the Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, to clear up issues of taxation.
“If we want the free trade zones to work, we must be ready to give some incentives to investors. When issues of taxation are not clear, you would want to go elsewhere. We cannot afford to have investors who would normally have come to the country to go and set up outside the country,” he said.
He noted that NEPZA intends to work towards increasing the number of free zones in the country, adding that every senatorial district should have a free zone.
He said out of 30 functional free zones in the country, 18 are located in Lagos with Lekki Free Zone housing most of the industries.
He commended the Lagos State Government for fully utilizing the free zones, urging other states to copy Lagos’ example to embrace free zones as a key aspect of their economic development.
Speaking further on the existing freezones in the country, he said there are a total of 55 free zones but only 30 are functional with a total of an estimated $35 billion US dollars combined investment profile.
He added that 170 thousand people are currently employed in the 30 functional free zones across the country with 541 industries currently operating in them.