By Jonah Nwokpoku

Bayelsa State government is set to leverage on private sector investment to drive the economic growth of the state This, according Commissioner for Ministry of Trade, Industry and Investment, Hon.  Kemela    Okara is the purpose of the Second Bayelsa State Economic Summit schedule to hold from July 29th  to July 31st  in Yenagoa, the state capital.

In an interaction with journalists in Lagos last week, Okara explained that the reason for organising the Bayelsa state investors forum is that “we felt it is important coming from the backdrop of what used to be Bayelsa State before the amnesty when Bayelsa was known for things like militancy, pipeline vandalism, kidnapping and other violent crimes.

“So, coming from that background, post amnesty, the government of His Excellency, Seriake Dickson saw very clearly that there was need to communicate that Bayelsa is open for business, that Bayelsa welcomes investors and that the state is serious about growing the local economy.

And one of the ways that was clear to us to communicate that effectively was to organise a forum where investors can meet with government officials and can meet with the local private sector in Bayelsa State and can have discussions focused on how to establish businesses in specific focus areas.”

Held successfully for the first time in 2014 with over 800 delegates in attendance, the forum, according to Okara, had already started producing tangible results as the state recently penned a N19.8 billion contract with Kesio Associates Nigeria Limited, one of the companies that participated in the maiden edition of the forum, to build a 5,000 unit stalls of building materials market to serve the entire Niger Delta region.

Okara said the idea of opening up Bayelsa State up for investors was borne out of a vision to create opportunities for all in the state while creating a private sector context that would allow private enterprises to thrive in the state. According to him, “We set a very clear vision and our vision was possibly to become the model of African economic success story. Flowing from that, we asked ourselves what to do.

And our aim is to grow enterprise, create jobs in order that we can have prosperity for all. Our strategy has been that for us to achieve these dreams, we need to move away from depending on the receipt of FAAC allocation that comes to every state on a monthly basis to having an economy that has a proper value chain with opportunities that abound. That can only be achieved when you focus on industrialisation. This is because it is when you industrialise that you create secondary and tertiary levels where people can be hooked up on the value chain.

“Having determined that, we considered what should be our focus areas. We determined that four areas should be our focus. One area that is very obvious is oil and gas industrial activities. This is because we already have a well developed oil exploration segment of the market. And then we thought about the industries that can spin off from there. These include industries in petrochemicals, fertiliser and refining.

“The second focus area is agriculture. Bayelsa State even prior to oil exploration was a very big centre for oil palm production. As a matter of fact, some of the earliest palm oil estates were established in Bayelsa State way back in the 1960s. So we thought, let us deepen the oil palm sector of the agriculture. The other area we considered is rice farming, because our terrain is ideal for rice farming.”

Explaining further, he said: “The third area we are focusing on is power generation. And the reason for us is quite simple. This is because, even though Bayelsa is known as oil and gas producing state, we are actually more of gas than oil. We have more gas than oil. In many ways, oil is actually incidental to the abundance of gas that Bayelsa State has. And gas is fixed up for power generation. So our aim is to attract power generation companies to be cited in Bayelsa State. In that regard, we have set aside an area which is called a power hub, an area which is in continuity to gas evacuation.

“The fourth area for us is light manufacturing. From our studies, we have realised that for many businesses, what is key for them in light manufacturing types of endeavours is really regular power supply. If we have regular power supply, we will be able to attract that kind of businesses because power is perhaps the single costliest factor for any business anywhere in Nigeria.

So we thought we could leverage on that. Tied to light manufacturing is the establishment of the eco-industrial park. This refers to what is today’s global best practice in building industrial parks to make the environment greener, to have much better standard of waste management so that waste will not impact negatively on the environment.”

He said these areas, for which they are seeking investors, shall form the fulcrum upon which the foundation of Bayelsa State’s economy shall be built. He said to drive this; the state has already begun to put the requisite infrastructure like access road, finance, and other forms of incentive in place. “We know we cannot achieve these without certain key enablers,” he said.

He added: “One is infrastructure and it should be noted that within the vicinity of this industrial park that is being built, there is an airport which is due to be completed this year. It is just fifteen minutes drive from this eco-industrial park. There is already an excellent road network in the area. All these will make it easier to get in and out of Bayelsa State.

So there is good fundamental infrastructure already in place. Skill is another big area. This is where we have a lot of work to do to. There is a huge skills gap but we are focusing intensively on addressing these skills gap to ensure that we have people who have the right enterprise skills, technical skills, and right vocational skills to take advantage of the opportunities that will abound.”