Private sector operators have been tasked to invest and develop capacity in order to create services that are exportable to other African countries and beyond.
Femi Akintunde, CEO, Alpha Mead Facilities Management Company, observed that investing in the services so created was necessary because such services have to be marketable before they can be exported.
Before you can talk of exporting you must ensure you have deliver the same services to your immediate environment, what we need to export we must have sufficiency in house first, he further added.
Akintunde noted how his firm has over the years exported facilities management service to other African countries to earn scarce foreign exchange for Nigeria.
“For us, our main vision is to be the biggest and the first facility management company in Nigeria, we have establish presence in various cities across the continent of Africa, our decision to export our professional service to other countries actually fulfilling that mandate of achieving our vision,” he said.
He however, tasked Government of providing enabling environment that will make businesses thrive.
According to him “when you talk of enabling environment for business to thrive, it start from fiscal environment, to the legal, to the legislative environment that will make organizations and businesses to run efficiently, if you look at the state of infrastructure in this country, is one of the business enabling system or structure that we make the country services or products to be competitive in other countries after meeting the domestic demand. In a situation where the state of infrastructure is not adequate enough then, businesses have to make up and fill up the gap and that add to the cost of producing and ruining businesses”
He further urged government to have a system of appraising the state of our infrastructure, in terms of provision and sustainability.
“Once the fiscal environment is in good order, power especially, telecommunication, roads, water supply, social services like good education system, that will produces the quality of manpower needs to run businesses sustainable in this environments, social services like health is also provided, then the sky is the limit our country, because many others African countries do not have the kind of capacity Nigeria has,” he said.
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