In line with efforts to accelerate the pace of economic growth in the country, the federal government has called on potential investors to revive, reform and transform the Calabar and Kano Free Trade Zones (FTZs) in order to make them functional and globally competitive.
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The Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Adeniyi Adebayo, said this yesterday in Lagos, during a road show for the concession of Calabar and Kano FTZs, organised by the National Council of Privatisation (NCP), through its secretariat, the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) in conjunction with Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment and the Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority (NEPZA).
Adebayo, who linked African countries like Ethiopia and Ghana, which had leveraged FTZs as designated areas for promoting trade openness and investment facilitation for growth and development, lamented that efforts to replicate the success of the FTZ model in Nigeria had not recorded the same success.
He said the two FGN-owned Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in their current state could not significantly improve the country's competitiveness nor help the drive to effect structural change and economic diversification.
He hinged on poor infrastructure, reliance on treasury to finance capital expenditure, lack of link between the industrialisation strategy of government and the zones, among others as factors responsible for Nigeria not meeting up with the needed structural change.
According to him, "The ultimate aim for the free trade zone scheme is to attract foreign direct investments, generate employment, enhance trade and industrialisation, promote exports, enhance foreign exchange earnings and encourage transfer of technical knowhow."
He envisaged that the two FTZs when fully developed within a coherent, well-designed and executed framework could deliver tangible outcomes like their counterparts in other climes where FTZs have contributed significantly to their economic development. ■