NIPC says Nigeria needs bold and coherent policy changes to attract more foreign direct investment (FDI) in the post-COVID-19 era. The Executive Secretary, Ms Yewande Sadiku, who spoke at a webinar, noted that UNCTAD estimates global FDI inflows will fall by at least 30% as a result of the pandemic.
"The expectation is that the impact will be worse from an FDI perspective than what we saw during the global financial crisis," Sadiku said. "I think the headwinds that we see in 2020, 2021 and 2022 suggest that we will need bold and coherent policy changes and deep economic reforms to reverse the trend that we expect."
She noted that NIPC's investment tracking data showed mounting pressure on announcements even before the pandemic, with COVID-19 expected to deepen the trend. She highlighted the "flight to quality" dynamic, where economies offering investors both attractive returns and a conducive business environment will be the winners. She also stressed the importance of building domestic production capacity for essential goods and coordinating a whole-of-government response to investor concerns.
"For those sectors that have suffered from the pandemic, I think it would be useful to remove administrative and regulatory bottlenecks to allow those sectors to flourish," she said. Sadiku added that it is important to aggressively encourage more Nigerians to invest domestically, so that increased domestic investor activity can also serve as a catalyst for foreign companies expanding or partnering with Nigerian businesses.
