By Adadareporters
The Enugu State government is to launch an Investment and Economic Growth Stakeholder Roundtable in September 2023 as a precursor ‘to the launch of the first edition of the Enugu State Diaspora and Investment Forum (ES-DIF) scheduled for April 2024’.
Gov Peter Mbah said this while briefing the press at the Enugu Government House on Monday. He said the initiative would be a multi-stakeholder, fully transactional platform to accelerate the identification, preparation, curation, and financial closure of investment projects to achieve the state’s private sector-led economic transformation agenda.
According to him, “In its first year, the Enugu State Diaspora and Investment Forum aims to attract at least US$2.0 billion in investment interests.”
He said the roundtable would, in September this year, bring together bilateral and multilateral development partners, and senior-level executives from commercial banks, public and corporate pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, private equity funds, infrastructure funds, and other domestic financial institutions for a systematic discussion on advancing viable investment opportunities in the state.
ES-DIF and the series of preliminary business and investment roundtables would be implemented by a Diaspora and Investment Unit located in his office with the task of ‘working with relevant government agencies, project sponsors, domestic and international financial institutions, private investors including the diaspora investing community, and development partners to crowd in capital for critical development programmes and projects in priority sectors that can improve Enugu State’s global competitiveness and drive suitable development outcomes’, he said.
Among the roles of the forum, he said, are ‘identifying and curating projects to bankability, working with relevant government agencies to facilitate policy reforms, technical assistance support and innovative partnerships, mobilizing capital for bankable projects, including net-zero aligned projects that can unlock the economic potential of Enugu State and South-Eastern Nigeria; implementing an annual investment marketplace with special boardrooms for government agencies, potential investors, and project sponsors to match and mutually de-risk projects, as well as aaccelerating the financial closure of investment deals brought to the ES-DIF platform by public and private investors’.
