Investments into Nigeria hit $9.29bn investment in Q3 2019 – NIPC

Nigeria has attracted a total of $9.29bn investments for the third quarter of 2019, the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission has announced.

The NIPC said the announcements were tracked through the NIPC Intelligence Newsletters, which are issued 6 days a week.

In it’s investment report for the quarter which is usually premised on its newsletter sent out 6 times ina month, the commission says a total of 13 projects across 4 states and offshore Nigeria were announced by investors in 4 countries.

According to the report, “The major announcements were made by Aiteo Eastern Exploration and Production Company which plans to invest US$5billion in crude exploration; Sterling Oil Exploration and Energy Production Company Limited (SEEPCO) in joint a venture project of US$3.15 billion with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) for the development of Oil Mining Lease (OML) 13; CMES-OMS Petroleum Development Company (CPDC).

“Also in a joint venture project with NNPC to the tune of $875.75 million for the funding, provision of technical services and alternative financing for the development of OML 65; and Datasonic Group Berhard, a Malaysian Group investing in the information and communication infrastructure to the tune of US$100 million,” the report said.

Further breakdown of the report shows that mining & quarrying sector accounted for 98%, while information and communications, finance & insurance, transportation & storage, real estate, human health & social services, manufacturing and agriculture collectively accounted for the balance of 2%. 

The major destination was the Niger-Delta region with 87%, while Lagos, Kaduna, Anambra and Ogun states accounted for less than 1%. 

However, the report according to NIPC is based only on investment announcements cited in NIPC’s Newsletters from July to September 2019; and  may not contain exhaustive information on all investment announcements in Nigeria during the period. 

NIPC also said it did not independently verify the authenticity of the investment announcements but is working on tracking the announcements as they progress to actual investments.

Also, the Executive Secretary of the Commission, Yewande Sadiku announced at a quarterly media brief the the NIPC is working towards amending the NIPC act to make it more proactive in attracting investments.

“NIPC is just an advocacy commission, we are not even a regulator. So what we’re trying to do is to serve as an investment ombudsman and be in a very proactive position to attract more investments for the country,” 

“Major highlights of the amendment act will see NIPC becoming an investment ombudsman, take over full administration of pioneer status incentive, cordination of one stop investment centres among others, as we are striving to build the investments aspirations of Nigerians,” she added.

She further stated that the the commitment of the Commission to compliance with the Freedom and Information Act (FOI) request made the NIPC to move up from 90th position in 2016 to 2nd position in 2019.

“In the MDAs rankings for Compliance with FOI requests and transparency, we were ranked 90th pit 131 MDAS in 2016, from which we moved to 75th out of 166 in 2017. We further improved to 17 out of 176 MDAs in 2018 and finally we got to 2nd out of 196 MDAs in 2019,” she added.