From: Amaechi Ogbonna, Marrakech
Nigeria and other African countries seeking to attract foreign investments have been urged to work toward ensuring conducive political and fiscal environment with right infrastructures to be able to attract the quality investors.
Group Chief Executive Officer, NGX Group, Oscar Onyema, who spoke to Daily Sun, on the sidelines of the 2023 Africa Investment Forum Market Days in Marrakesh, Morocco, said political risk and economic uncertainty remain a big challenge that most foreign investments detest across the world.
Whilst commending the present administration for its efforts toward getting foreign direct investment, Onyema said the Federal Government seems to be focused on making sure it has the right environment and right infrastructure to support domestic investors are in place.
“They are also going out there telling investors that we want you to come and that we are open for business. These things are very important. But it is also important to know that Investment flows are very ubiquitous as Investors naturally go to where it is very easy to do business and make profit.
“The last point I want to make is that from a capital market perspective, we have been talking to investors. Portfolio investors do not like uncertainty, they like transparency, to be able to model expected returns and manage risks. So, those are very important things that our government should be paying attention to in trying to attract investors,” he said.
Onyema added that Nigeria needs to showcase its budget and have effective connection to investors if it intends to have a bigger market share in Africa.
Despite analysts rating of Africa’s default rate on bankable projects at 2.5 per cent, he noted that political risk is often considered as a challenging factor and so the statistics is however untrue. “There seem to be a perception that because of the fact that Africa is still experimenting different political constructs, it is not stable however the numbers do not support this argument.
“At the end of the day, the real question is, are you able to execute and fund your project. If you are able to do that it becomes the most important consideration. Political risk exists everywhere it is not just in Africa.
With regards to the projects that are funded here, there is a lot of work, that happens before the market day, so all the projects are already bankable before they get here.”, the NGX Group CEO explained.