Kunle Kalejaye 30 November 2016, Sweetcrude, Lagos – The Oil and Gas Free Zones Authority, OGFZA, has highlighted the advantages foreign investors stand to enjoy in opening up businesses in Nigeria’s Oil and Gas Free Zones, OGFZ.
According to managing director of the authority, Mr. Umana Okon Umana, the benefits for investors include zero-tax from federal, state and local tax authorities; zero-levies and rates (that is no corporate tax, withholding tax, value added tax and capital gain tax); 100% foreign ownership and 100% repatriation of profit and dividends.
Umana, who disclosed this during a visit to the Malaysian High Commission in Abuja, said other benefits are 100% repatriation of foreign capital investment and streamlined documentation that makes for fast-tracking of all business transactions.
He told the Malaysian High Commissioner, Lim Juay Jim, that Nigeria owned functioning and vibrant oil and gas free zones in Onne in Rivers State; Warri, Delta State and Apapa, Lagos and that the OGFZA was developing additional oil and gas free zones in Brass, Bayelsa State; Ikpokiri, which is contiguous with Onne in Rivers State and Ibaka in Akwa Ibom State.
According to him, the developed free zones in Onne, Warri and Lagos, and the new ones being developed in Brass, Ibaka and Ikpokiri presented viable and irresistible opportunities for investors to take advantage of and become part of the profitable history of Nigeria’s oil and gas industry.
He said there were opportunities for the development of infrastructure such as roads and power plants to provide dedicated electricity for the oil and gas free trade hubs.
Umana also explained that attractive opportunities for downstream industries like refineries, manufacturing of pipes for the oil and gas sector and related industrial goods as well as infrastructure existed for investors in the free zones.
He added that his agency was willing to partner with any investor, using the public-private partnership, PPP, model to achieve its mandate and business plan, stressing that the success recorded in the Onne free zone derived from the PPP business model.
The High Commissioner, Mr. Jim, commended Umana for the visit and the presentation promising to visit the OGFZA headquarters with a delegation of Malaysian investors to explore investment opportunities in keeping with the strong historical and economic ties between Nigeria and Malaysia.
Explaining that Malaysia has for long seen Nigeria as the economic hub of Africa, he said that it was Nigeria’s economic weight that made Malaysia to relocate its Africa trade mission from Nairobi, Kenya to Lagos.
Umana was accompanied on the visit by the head of trade and investment at OGFZA, Adamu Kontagora; head of legal department and company secretary, Barr. Abduwasiu Sule, and Maurice Etim, Chairman of Aurum Energy Maritime and Construction Limited.