Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has advised the government of Nigeria to slash its trade and infrastructure costs to attract more investors.
The former finance minister also suggested a reduction of linkage and regulatory costs as well as Customs duties to encourage investments.
She argued that the costs of doing business in Nigeria were far higher than those of high-income countries.
The WTO boss also urged an improvement of the security situation in the country to attract foreign and domestic investments.
Okonjo-Iweala made the suggestions at the just concluded two-day Mid-term Ministerial Performance Review retreat in Abuja.
Her words: “Improving security and lowering transaction cost for foreign investment, even for domestic investment, would be necessary. And Nigeria is part of a group of countries negotiating an agreement on investment facilitation at the WTO.
”Once this agreement is negotiated, ratified, and is being implemented, it could be instrumental in attracting additional trade-oriented investment.
”To complement investment facilitation, Nigeria has to cut down on trade cost, infrastructure cost, linkage cost, regulatory cost, customs cost, basically, all costs associated with moving goods from tie factory or farm gate to the final consumer.”
