Edo State Government has assured investors that necessary information required to make investment decisions are easy to access from relevant agencies of government in the state.
This was disclosed during a meeting between officials of the state government, the Nigeria Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC) and the Open Governance Partnership (OGP), in Benin City.
Senior Special Assistant to the Edo State Governor on Investment Promotion, Mr. Kelvin Uwaibi, said the meeting was organised to harmonise government data and ensure there is sufficient information for investors to make decisions.
According to him, “We are working with the NIPC and the OGP to enshrine transparency and open access to data in the state. It would interest you to know that Edo State is the first state to adopt the Open Governance Initiative and has made its budget public in the last 10 years. We pioneered it in this clime.”
He said the target is to ensure that investors looking to invest in Edo would have all information needed to commit their funds into any sector in the state as sufficient information would be available on the database, noting, “We have been working with the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA) on this and are impressed with their response. However, we need to speed up the pace as the state is fast becoming an investor’s haven.”
“When we talk about investor information, we mean the necessary information they need in any sector they seek to invest. For instance, we are populating the database on the total number of hospitals, secondary schools and the categories of these schools. This is so that investors will be well guided,” he added.
Senior Investment Officer, NIPC, Abdulrahman Adamu said the team was in the state to ascertain the level of work done on the Nigerian Investment Certification Programme for States (NICPS) ongoing across the country.
He noted that the NICPS seeks to improve the capacity of states to document, promote and facilitate new private investments that will support economic diversification and job creation, as well as help signpost investors to those states best prepared to support them in three critical standards of information, property and marketing.
He said, “The team observed that efforts have been made by the MDAs to collate requested information and data for the programme. However, the need to improve the tempo in which the state is moving was advised.”
