The Nigeria Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC) has began a review of the current investment laws with a view to making it more attractive to foreign investors while also strengthening NIPC’s institutional capacity to deliver on its statutory mandate. The affected laws are NIPC Act No 16 of 1995 and the draft Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (IPPA).
An Inter-Ministerial Committee comprising officers of the International and Comparative Law Department as well as the Legal Drafting Department of the Federal Ministry of Justice, an officer from the Investment Department of the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment and representatives of NIPC has been inaugurated for this purpose.
Executive Secretary of NIPC, Mrs. Uju Aisha Hassan Baba stated that one of the key strategies being adopted to face the challenges in investment promotion is the sharpening of the promotional tools such as the IPPA which deals primarily with the admission, treatment and protection of foreign investment.
IPPAs usually cover investments by enterprises or individuals of one country in the territory of its treaty partner and ultimately boost the confidence of potential investors.
She explained that the need for review of the country’s IPPA and investment law was to develop a legal and institutional framework in line with current global investment and economic trends that will enable direct and aggressive strategies for foreign investment inflows.
Nigeria, she said, “is in fierce competition with other developed and developing countries for global capital hence must develop specific promotional tools to boost its marketing strategies”.
Aisha Hassan Baba served as Chairman of Nigeria’s Inter-Ministerial Committee on the negotiation of IPPAs and had prior to her appointment as the Executive Secretary of NIPC, fervently called for NIPC to drive the review process of the document as the nation’s foremost investment promotion agency that relies on the incentives contained in the IPPAs.
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