Chairman Senator Onawo Mohammed Ogoshi flanked by C’ttee members and Chinese delegation.
…As Senate assures of enabling legislations to protect investments
IGNATIUS OKOROCHA, Abuja
The Senate committee on Solid Minerals has promised to provide enabling legislation to protect Chinese companies $500million investments in solid minerals exploration in the country.
Making this declaration at an interactive session between the Chinese delegation and the Senate committee on Solid Minerals resources at the weekend, Acting Chairman of the committee, Senator Onawo Mohammed Ogoshi (Nasarawa South) assured the delegation that the Nigerian Senate will provide enabling legislation to protect their investments in any part of the country.
“Nigerian Senate is supposed to give you all the necessary encouragement to come and bring this huge amount of money to our economy.
“Our laws on solid minerals exploration are very robust. We intend to make it more robust by amending some of the laws that are obsolete, outdated and enacting laws that will give your companies better protection in doing business in Nigeria, he assured.
He appealed to the delegation to bring more investors into Nigeria to do business.
Also speaking, a member of the committee, Senator Mohammed Alero, said,” I join the chairman to commend you for coming to invest in our country.
” You have come at the right time when the country is venturing into diversing her economy. We had a mono- economy before now, where we depend heavily on oil for our foreign exchange earnings but the federal government has realized that we had no better choice than to look for other sectors of economy to earn revenue to finance our budget and solid minerals is one area where we have a lot of potentials.
“We will do all we can to facilitate your involvement in this sector. We will liase with the Ministry of Solid Minerals at the National level to secure licenses and to give you permission to go and start mining.
“We will also talk to the governors and the traditional Institutions to ensure that you have free access to the areas where you are going to do your business and ones that is done, I don’t think you will have any problem,” he said.
Earlier, leader of the delegation comprising some Minerals exploration in China, Mr Chen Twan of Zong Hong Kotai group declared that the delegation is coming up with an initial $500million to invest in three states of Nigeria; comprising Zamfara, Kebbi and Nasarawa.
He noted that if they do well within the first one year of their exploration in the three states, they would extend their investments to other states that have solid mineral potential.
Mr Chen Twan assured, “If we test the waters and see that it is good, we will attract more investors to Nigeria to invest in minerals deposits.”
According to him,”as an international group, our company specializes in mining and bitumen. In the past few years, we have invested extensively globally and on that strength, we have come to Nigeria to survey the possibility of investing in the mining and industrial park sectors in your country for the coming year.
“We also have another investment in Nigeria and we will make that known in the course of our stay in the country.”
Also Representative of Nigerian Investors and Managing Director Exterdam Exploration, Mr Adamuta said,
“Over time, we have been engaging them for the past two years. We have gone to their factories in China. I have personally visited their factories for the past one year, I saw their processes and we know what they do and we trust them and we are a Nigerian-based company.
“They are not coming to Nigeria on their own, they are coming based on the investigation they have done with the companies that we have and the licenses that we have acquired.
“So, they are coming to build on those licenses and that is why when they came, we had to introduce them to our fathers so that they will have full confidence in investing in Nigeria, knowing that we are a true company doing the right thing and following the laws of the country.”
He said the support of the Senate has given them the courage to invest the huge amount of money in the nation’s solid minerals sector.
“With Senate’s support, they still want to invest more money into this venture and if that is good, they intend to invest another one billion dollars into the solid minerals when this first phase of the investment scales through,” he assured.
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