The Minister of State for Trade and Investment, Dr Samuel Ortom,has reiterated the Federal Government’s commitment to giving necessary support to potential investors in the country.

Ortom gave the assurance when he received Mr Romeo Barberopoulos, Chairman, Export Promotion Group of the Manufacturing Association of Nigeria (MAN) in his office in Abuja.

“The Ministry of Trade and Investment is ready to work with all intending investors in the country and we will not relent until we win the war of insecurity and make the environment conducive,” he said. He stressed that the challenges in the power and security sectors would soon be a thing of the past.

According to him, President Goodluck Jonathan’s agenda is to provide jobs and to create wealth for the country’s teeming youths.  He said that the ministry was set up to actualise and achieve the target of the administration, adding that it was working hard to remove the hindrances to achieving economic development in the country. Ortom assured them that the government was doing all it could to tackle insecurity in the country for the industrial sector to develop.

Transformational agenda

“I want to assure the manufacturers that the President has given his words that every investor and his investments will be protected in the country,” he said. The minister said that the transformational agenda of the President was intended to transform every sector of the economy. He said that within the next few months, Nigerians would begin to experience the impact of improved power supply.

Barberopoulos said that a group of investors from Greece and Germany were interested investing in the railway, power and agribusiness sectors in Nigeria. He called for deeper trade relations with the the foreign countries, saying that trade should be a veritable tool in the transformational agenda.

He said that it was expected that foreign direct investments from Greece and Germany to Nigeria would be up to N35 billion.   Barberopoulos said that Greece would like to invest in the building of a Marine University that would train captains in the marine industry.

Shareholders blame SEC for failure of e-dividend policy. Some shareholders in the capital market on Tuesday blamed the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the slow take-off of the e-dividend policy. They told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in separate interviews in Lagos that the SEC had not put any enlightenment programme in place to educate investors on the policy.

Mr Boniface Okezie, President of Progressive Shareholders Association of Nigeria, said that the failure of shareholders to comply with the requirements was due to ignorance about the policy. Okezie said that the capital market regulator had failed to brainstorm with registrars, service providers and banks on the problems being encountered in remittance of dividends.

He said that many shareholders had not shown interest in the e-dividend policy because some banks insisted that customers should have current accounts for payment of dividends under the new dispensation.

Okezie advised that SEC should liaise with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to ensure that all commercial banks would accept both savings and current accounts for e-dividend payment. Another shareholder, Mr Bayo Adeleke, said that some investors, especially those outside the cities, were not aware of the e-dividend policy and the processes.

Adeleke, who is the Secretary of Independent Shareholders Association of Nigeria, urged SEC to educate shareholders in three major languages to reduce the incidence of unclaimed dividends.

He said that the inability of SEC to adequately educate the investing public had retarded the growth of the policy, launched in Feb. 28, 2008. Mr Timothy Adesiyan, another shareholder, said that bank alert charges had also discouraged some investors with meagre dividends from subscribing to the policy.

Adesiyan also said that some registrars could not implement the policy because some shareholders did not return the e-dividend payment forms.

E-dividend payment is the process of crediting shareholders’ accounts within 24 hours after a company pays dividends to its shareholders.