By Jonathan Lois
Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Benjamin Kalu has assured the public that the parliament will priotize legislations to boost direct foreign investments and make Nigeria the best business destination in Africa.
Kalu gave the assurance on Friday when the Deputy Ambassador, Embassy of Hungary, Ambassador Gabor Krauss paid him a courtesy visit.
The deputy speaker also stated that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has a robust economic agenda that will reposition Nigeria’s business climate.
He said: “Nigeria is big with regards to playing a major role in the global market and anybody who sees the opportunity now and steps in stands to benefit from the market share that is going to spring up from Nigeria.
“I say so because we will be leveraging the Africa continental trade agreement, that we are all signatories to, that will be commencing soon. Most companies around the world are seeing beyond their own continents and looking into the continent of Africa.
“You know if you come to African continent, the biggest market is Nigeria. So anyone who’s going to be strategically positioned to benefit from the Africa continental trade agreement cannot avoid Nigeria.
“So what you’re doing now is good for your country, by sniffing out opportunities, closer to your people to embrace. I want to promise that from this office which is the office of the Deputy Speaker, ours is to make sure that we provide the legal framework that will enable foreign direct investments and increase confidence in the business environment. All policies that will have to increase the confidence of investors, we will make sure we champion that through legislative interventions.
“Because we have seen, though from another arm of government, that the current president, means well for the nation. Being a man who has been in the private sector for many years, public sector as a governor, as a member of the parliament who has done critical analysis, I can assure you he has a sharp focus on what he wants to do in Nigeria, economically speaking.
“We are here to give him all the support, so any foreign direct investor that wants to come in should have at the back of their mind, that he’s only going to get support from the executive but the legislature is another place they can run to for comfort. We will make sure we fine tune all the areas of bottlenecks to enable new companies spring up. Thank you for this visit. I’m sure it won’t be the only time we will engage. If there’s anyway we can help, kindly let us know”.
Speaking earlier, Ambassador Krauss said his mission was to communicate to the deputy speaker their plan to bring more investments and humanitarian projects to Nigeria.
Krauss said that they recently visited Abia State where they sought to establish a factory as a joint venture that will see the Hungarian government bringing the technology while the state will provide the land.
He said that there were more Hungarian companies which will be doing business in the country, adding that his country has equally offered a lot of scholarship opportunities to Nigerian students.
