Bayelsa
State Commissioner for Trade and Investment, Barrister Kamela Okara, in this
interview says the state hopes to attract over $1 billion investment through
its first investment forum, holding next week.
What are the preparations for the first Bayelsa State
Investment Forum slated for next week?
I
can tell you confidently that we have gone a great length to ensure that we
have a successful programme next week in Bayelsa State. All the key elements
that will make it a huge success have been put in place in terms of the
speakers being invited, the participants who will attend and in terms of
logistics. So we are ready to host the world at the First Bayelsa State
Investment Forum.
What is the role to be played by the
private sector at this forum?
The
private sector is the key and central force in this event. The theme of the
event is “Unlocking Bayelsa State Economic Potential, Opportunities and
Challenges”. As you know, to unlock the potentials of a state requires active
participation of the private sector.
This
forum provides an avenue for the private sector to partner with the government
in unlocking the potentials of the state. What the government is doing is to
facilitate dialogue with the private sector. We are saying that the private
sector can come from the comparative advantage of Bayelsa State from the
economic point of view. And how they can benefit from this is the entire
objective of the Forum. Private sector is very key. They are the target audience
for this event.
What are the economic potentials
available in Bayelsa State?
The
major area which is not only of benefit to Bayelsa State but to the entire
country is power. As you may know, Bayelsa State generates one quarter of the
total oil production in Nigeria. Gas is what we have in great abundance. Gas is
also the feedstock for power generation.
What
we are doing is to encourage power companies that want to set up in Bayelsa
State to take advantage of the accessibility of gas and site their power plant
in the state because we want the state to become the power hub of Nigeria. We
know that in the short time, if we are able to get power companies to site and
generate as much as 3000 megawatts, if we add that to the current 3,500 to 6000
megawatts, it will make a huge difference in Nigeria.
Bayelsa
has a natural geographical environment for cultivation. If you look at rice
cultivation belt across the globe, it falls within the same belt such as
Thailand, Vietnam and other countries. We have the same kind of
environment-mangrove forest which is good environment for rice farming. That is
another major area.
Aquaculture
is another area. We are rich in fish
and all of that. We also want to expand the value chain in oil and gas through
the Nigeria Local Contempt Development and Monitoring Board (NCDM). In
partnership with the NCDM, we also want to expand the access of small and
medium scale enterprises into the entire value chain. There are lots of
opportunities in the state. These are few examples of opportunities that are
available in the state and we are ready to explore them.
What concessions are you offering to
prospective investors in Bayelsa State?
Take
the power sector for instance, we are currently working on an industrial
masterplan, which has provisions for areas that will be assigned to power. We
are already making the preparation, making the land ready, doing the
acquisition and getting ready for industrial park. That way, it will make it
easy for them to determine their area of focus. That is one major area. If you
look at it, the cost of land and the cost of preparing the land is quite huge.
Land preparation is going to be a major capital discount.
Is there anything like tax holiday for
prospective investors?
In
reality, tax holidays do not form a major incentive to investors. I have found
that what most businesses want is the ease of doing business in the
environment. Bayelsa is one of the safest places in the country because we have
worked really hard to put the issue of militancy, kidnapping and pipeline
vandalisation behind us. Even if you look at the issue of tax holiday, strictly
speaking, it is really the incentive of the Federal Government. Taxation is
within the jurisdiction of the federal government. It is under the Nigerian
Investment Promotion Council (NIPC) and Export Promotion Council, among others.
But we will try to ensure that there is no local taxation in those free trade
zones. One will be in a place called Elemebiri and the other one is planned for
a place called Agge. There is also the site for a deep sea port because we have
a natural deep sea port environment.
How achievable is the ambition of
Governor Seriake Dickson to turn Bayelsa into” Dubai” of Africa?
It
is very achievable if we remain focused on our drive for human capital
development. Aside other things we are doing, we are focused on providing
training so that we can build the skill level. What makes an economy really
very strong is the quality of human capital.
That
is the key backbone. When the Governor came on board, one of the first things
he did was the emergency in education and there has been a major drive to build
more schools. Not only that, we also have high number of Bayelsa people
pursuing various degrees and PhDs in various universities across the world. Our
bill alone for 2013 was in the region of N6 billion in scholarship for students
studying abroad. This effort is geared to ensure we have qualitative human
capital.
The
second thing we are doing is massive investment in agriculture. We are linking
the entire state with road network, this is in addition to the seaport I
mentioned earlier. The airport, as we speak, is under construction in the
state.
These
are the key things-infrastructure, human capital and creating the needed
conducive environment for business. It is like creating another Dubai. Dubai
ensured there is infrastructure, that they have qualitative human capital, and
their laws are business friendly. That is the same approach we are adopting and
with that we are sure we can become the Dubai of Africa. We want to be the
model of African business success story.
How is Bayelsa doing in terms of
internally revenue generation?
In
Bayelsa, the IGR is still on the low side. It is not what we want to achieve
yet but we are not so concerned about IGR today because we are now concerned
with what we can build for the future. So our focus is how can we transform
Bayelsa economy to what we want it to be. Our major focus today is to grow the
economy and once we do that, internally generated revenue will grow so our plan
is to diversify the economy, provide opportunity, provide the jobs, the
foundation will have a knock-out effect on the IGR that will accrue.
Are
you saying the government relies essentially on revenue from oil?
There
is no state that relies solely on oil. Most states apart from Lagos and Kano
rely predominantly on oil resources because they base what they do on revenues
from federal allocation. That is the fact for most states in Nigeria. But what
we want to achieve in Bayelsa State through this forum is economic
diversification because we realise we cannot depend on only one source of
income.
If the IGR is on the low side, how can
the state survive other than revenue from oil and gas?
This
forum is not about government’s responsibility. This forum is to grow the
private sector. It is to encourage the private sector to take advantage of the
opportunities in the sector. We aren’t asking the private sector to come and
build schools for us. We are capable of doing that and we are doing so. We
aren’t asking the private sector to come and build hospitals or roads for us.
Those are the responsibilities of the state government. What we are saying to
Nigerians is that we want people who are successful, who have jobs to come and
create jobs, create business opportunities and to do that we have to grow the
private sector.
Vanguard
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