SAFAR 24 1431 A.H.
MONDAY FEBRUARY 8, 2010.
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FDIs in Nigeria hit $11bn, says NIPC
Investments worth more than 11 billion dollars came into Nigeria in 2009, Alhaji Mustafa Bello, the Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC), said in Abuja.
Bello told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Saturday that although getting exact statistics was difficult, the country assessment by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) ranked Nigeria 19th in the world last year for attracting Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs).
``It shows that we may have gone beyond the five billion dollars we were having annually in previous years.
``We may have captured much more than that in terms of figures in 2009. Some have quoted 12 billion dollars, some have quoted 11 billion dollars.
``So, maybe we look at around 11 billion dollars as what came in last year,'' he said.
Bello said the country had been having problems getting the exact figures, noting that agencies such as the National Bureau of Statistics, which were responsible for providing such figures, were handicapped.
``UNCTAD, which does country assessment for various countries, has come out clearly to show that as at last year we were number 19 in attracting FDI, a position we did not attain in the previous year,'' he said.
According to him, the aggregate investment inflow should be about 60 billion dollars over a period of almost 10 years.
Bello also said the country performed well in 2009 in terms of its Gross Domestic Product, which was more than five per cent.
He added that in October 2008, a delegation of 670 people came from Japan to Nigeria and a similar delegation visited the country in 2009.
``So I will say that 2009 was quite an eventful year; we hope to see a lot more happening in 2010.
``By the end of this month we are receiving a large delegation of 170 coming from Turkey and we just received in January a 13-member delegation from Switzerland,'' he said.
The NIPC executive secretary said the services and telecommunications sectors attracted a large chunk of the FDIs.
