President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Saturday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, assured potential investors of the free flow of their funds in and out of Nigeria, saying the bottlenecks that created the impasse were long gone.
President Tinubu premised his assurances on reforms by his administration, particularly the discontinuance of petrol subsidy and the unification of the exchange rate.
“Your money will flow easily in and easily out. The arbitrage around our nation’s old foreign exchange policy regime and the corruption that was associated with it is also gone”, said the President as he opened talks with the Captains of Saudi Arabian industry at the Nigeria-Saudi Investment Roundtable in Riyadh.
Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Ajuri Ngelale, disclosed this in a statement he signed on Saturday titled ‘President Tinubu to Nigeria-Saudi investment roundtable: All bottlenecks will be crushed and your funds will come in and go out without hindrance’.
He maintained that his team of ministers and aides were working to erase the justifications for every negative notion about Nigeria’s business climate in the past with respect to ease, monetary policy and trade cooperation.
Declaring Nigeria “open for business”, the President said, “I believe in this team that I have brought from Nigeria. When I took office, I declared the immediate commencement of bold and fundamental economic reforms.
“We have executed them, and we sustain the reform process. Today, I declare that red tape is gone! I believe in the full application of free market economics.
“We took on those bold endeavours from day one in preparation for serious investors like you seated here”.
He told the Saudi business community that Nigeria had the ripe market and human capital for investors to prosper.
In his remarks, Saudi Arabia’s Trade and Investment Minister, Kahlid El-Falih, noted the passion and candid expression of the Nigerian leader, saying that after listening to Tinubu’s remarks, which were not from a prepared speech, the Saudi investment community would respond with substantial new investment across several sectors of the Nigerian economy.
“The Minister of Commerce and I will be visiting Nigeria either before the end of this year or very early next year with a very large delegation of Saudi CEOs from all key sectors.
“We know you are ready for business, so we do not want to come to Nigeria for any exploratory discussion. We are coming for implementation. It is an action visit”, said El-Falih.
