The Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority (NEPZA) will convene an inter-agency roundtable in June, its Managing Director, Hon. Emmanuel Jime, has disclosed.

Jime made the disclosure in Abuja at the weekend via a statement signed by the Head, Corporate Communications Unit, Simon Imobo-Tswam. He said the convening of the roundtable has become necessary following his interactions with investors and stakeholders as he continues his fact-finding and familiarisation tours of Free Trade Zones in the country.

According to him, such a roundtable would bring together critical stakeholders with a view to achieving operational harmony and fast-tracking the actualisation of NEPZA’s mandate, and, by extension, Nigeria’s industrialisation.

His words: “We are going to have a roundtable with sister-government agencies like the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Nigeria Immigrations Service (NIS), the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), the Nigeria Investment Promotion Council (NIPC) as well as investors in the FTZs, the Organised Private, the media, industry experts, etc.

“And I am careful in calling it a roundtable; and not a conference or a workshop as people have increasingly come to identify such terms with talkshops or official jamborees. It is a roundtable because we are going to sit together and talk as a family. And it is going to be different.

“The roundtable is not only necessary – it is urgent. We need to explain our mandate to the critical stakeholders, iron out all contending issues in the FTZs, situate operations within the legal framework, explore areas of inter-agency cooperation and strategise on ways of fast-tracking our long-delayed industrial take off.”

Jime added: “And, of course, I will use the opportunity to unveil my vision and sell it to Nigerians and the international community so that they can buy into it, support it so that we can innovate our FTZs and put them at par with those of the US, China, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea and Japan.”

The NEPZA Managing Director heads for Cross River state today (Monday) on a tour of FTZs in Calabar, including TINAPA.

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