Ossom Raphael

The Nigeria Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC), has disclosed that N7.8 billion investment came into the country between 2017 and 2020.

According to the investment commission, this is part of the total investment pledge of $203.9 billion by investors in the period under review.

The $7.8bn represents about 3.8 per cent of the entire $203.9bn which investors had promised to invest in the Nigerian economy.

Speaking Tuesday at a chat with journalists in Abuja, Director, Strategic Services of the Commission, Abubakar Yerima, explained that in 2017, investors pledged the sum of $66.35bn out of which only $2.41bn was actually funded, thus leaving a deficit of $66.35bn.

In the 2018 fiscal period, the total investment commitments were put at $90.89bn while actual inflow was only $78m, indicating a gap of $90.11bn.

In 2019, Nigeria also suffered an investment funding gap of $26.60bn as actual investments stood at $2.31bn out of the total pledge of $29.91bn made by investors.
For 2020, the pattern was not different as investors pledged $16.74bn, only $2.39bn actual investments were recorded at the end of that year.

This resulted in an investment funding gap of $14.35 billion, Yerima said.

He noted that the differential between investment commitment and actual investments stood at $196bn within the period under review.

He appealed to all stakeholders to support the NIPC in bridging the gap, noting that the Commission cannot achieve this feat alone.

Meanwhile, the Commission says it was able to tracked the sum of $8.99 billion as investment announcements into country for Q3 of 2021.

A breakdown indicates that Lagos received the largest share of the announcements with 20 projects accounting for 81 per cent ($7.29 billion) of the total in manufacturing, information and communications, finance and insurance, human health and social services, and electricity, while Rivers recorded $300 million worth of announcements in manufacturing and transportation, and Oyo had $231 million announced in electricity and trade (e-commerce). The four states, accounted for 87 per cent of the total investments.

“The top sectors by percentage are manufacturing (42%), electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply (25%), information and communications (23%) and transportation (7%).

The reports further disclosed that domestic investors were the most active during the period accounting for 47 per cent of the announcements, followed by announcements from South Korea (22%), South Africa (16%), and the Kingdom of Spain (6%).”