Wale Edun, Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, says the government is improving the economic and investment climate to lure more multinationals to Nigeria.
Edun, who spoke on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics programme, claimed that multinational corporations leaving the country lacked a liquid foreign exchange market.
He stated, “One of the major drawbacks and impediments for them (exiting multinationals) was the lack of a liquid foreign exchange market.”
“Now, we have a willing buyer, willing seller foreign exchange market. It is elevated, may be not at the levels we will like it to be but it is when you get inflation down that you can stabilise the exchange rate and even get it coming down similarly with the interest rate. That fight is on. It is an improved environment for them, for big investors as a whole.”
He said recent executive orders signed by President Bola Tinubu has improved the investment climate for gas which Nigeria has in abundance.
The minister said, “Companies will always come and go, of course, our aim is to not only keep them but to have them even more coming to invest, and we are sure that with the environment that we put in place, they would come.”
He said a proposal to make things easier for both local and foreign manufacturers operating in the country are in an Economic Stabilisation Package before the President.
“We are in a difficult place but the direction of travel is and it’s towards improvement. So, every single day, every single month, we are looking at an improved economic situation for Nigeria.”
As Nigeria battles its current economic crisis sparked by the government’s twin policies of petrol subsidy removal and unification of forex windows, some manufacturing companies have exited the country in the last few months, the latest being manufacturers of Huggies and Kotex brands of diapers, Kimberly-Clark
Others multinationals who exited Nigeria in the last one year are US-based Procter and Gamble (P&G), GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Unilever, Sanofi-Aventi Nigeria, amongst others.
Some similar reasons given by the companies include high energy cost and currency depreciation.
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