The Minister of Trade, Industry and Investment explains government move to diversify the economy

Minister of Trade,industry and Investment

   While speaking on a Channels Television’s programme; Mr Okechukwu Enelamah said that the federal government is following the guidelines of the policies around sectors with “comparative or relative advantage” to diversify the economy.

“These sectors range from agro-processing, where we are making sure that all the input materials, be they capital equipment or raw materials, have concessions.“The only thing is that the concessions were abused in the past. So the work right now is to make sure that the genuine ones get it and that’s an important difference.

The Minister also stated that the President had directed that a Presidential Business Environment Enabling Council, Chaired by the Vice President, should be set up. The Council will focus majorly on Ease of Doing Business and making Nigeria more attractive.

He noted that “Nigeria has been sliding in terms of the Ease of Doing Business Index of the World Bank to the point where we are rated 169 out of a little over 180 countries”, promising that this administration will reverse the trend.

“But there are specific things to do, which we are doing, and those things will lead to a difference. There is a Presidential Council, which is inter-ministerial and we are meeting on it and we are going to use the National Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC) as a secretariat and I am confident you will see the results.


“We are going to work with the private sector. We have identified a private sector lead that will be announced soon that is going to be the head of this whole Ease of Business Enabling Environment Forum.He noted that the government would improve by 20 points after a year and move to within the top 100 at the expiration of President Muhammadu Buhari’s term in 2019.