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By Aidoghie Paulinus
The Managing Director, Lekki Free Zone Development Company (LFZDC), Dai Shunfa, has said rumours and fake news about Nigeria are the major challenges affecting the development of the Lekki Free Zone.
Shunfa,while speaking during a media tour of the Lekki Free Zone in Lagos, also said as a result of rumours and bad news, it was difficult to convince entrepreneurs outside the country to do business in the Lekki Free Zone.
He said: “In the world, outside Nigeria, people are believing that we have kidnapping, we have killings every day here. So, this kind of rumour left a very bad image to all the customers outside Nigeria.
“Whenever we are trying to market ourselves, market the Lekki Free Zone in China, in Dubai, even in other Asian and African countries, people are afraid to come and invest here. That is why I am very happy to see all of you here, that we need to voice out that Nigeria is safe.”
The LFZDC MD, further said he had been in the free zone for almost 20 year and never witnessed anything of such.
“I have been here for almost 20 years. See, every country, they have their problems. I cannot find any country where there is no kidnapping, there is no killing.
“Something like this is happening everywhere, in every corner of the world. Nigeria is not different. The country is safe, but I don’t know why there are lots of bad news and rumours about our country and it is very painful,” he also said.
He added that the development was affecting the company’s marketing, especially on attracting more and more flagship enterprises to the zone and to the country.
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He also cited the new Tax Reform Bill recently passed by the National Assembly as a cause for concern.
He believed that the purpose of the government to push out the bill was to first of all generate more income for the government and also encourage the free zone enterprises to export more and more of their products out of the country, not only to sell in the domestic market.
He however ,said there were lots of changes about the free zone incentives, disclosing that the preferential policies, most of them had been affected.
He further said most of the free zone enterprises are currently selling their products to the domestic market, which he said, was very helpful to the country’s economy and the society since marketers are selling the goods at high quality and at cheaper rates to the benefit of the people.
He,however ,said most of them are trying to export their products out of Nigeria, but were hindered by challenges they needed the government to address.
“For example, when we are trying to export our products to ECOWAS countries, most of the free zone enterprises are not entitled to the ECOWAS tax incentives.
“Two, apart from ECOWAS, when the free zone enterprises are trying to export their products to Europe or North American countries, we also face some challenges from the policy area like the certificate of origin.
“Free zone enterprises can only source their certificate of origin from NEPZA, but the certificate of origin issued by NEPZA are not acceptable in the international market. They preferred the one from NACCIMA,” Dai disclosed.
