By Tope Templer Olaiya
After successfully hosting the 24th edition of the World Economic Forum on Africa (WEFA) in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory amid grave security concerns, the stage is now set for the Greater London Business Conference on Nigeria, holding in September. The conference is being anchored by the Nigerian London Business Forum (NILOBF).
NILOBF, a registered United Kingdom (UK) non-profit organisation, in conjunction with the Nigerian High Commission in London and the British High Commission in Nigeria, seeks to promote bilateral trade and investment relations between the two countries by bringing together business people from Nigeria and the UK to seek new investment opportunities, develop long term business relationships and finalize existing business contracts.
It is also the official business chamber and trade association, comprising Nigerian, British and non-British companies doing business with Nigeria, including subsidiaries of Nigerian companies/institutions doing business in the UK.
Although WEFA was a continental showpiece, Nigeria as the host emerged the ultimate beneficiary. It galvanized the world against the insurgents that have made economic and social life unbearable in some parts of the north. It unified global voices and action against the kidnap of the schoolgirls.
This is aside the commitment from investors across the globe pledging to invest billions of dollars in Nigeria’s sectors such as energy, agriculture, healthcare and infrastructure, among others.
On September 17 & 18 at the Royal National Hotel, London, the world will gather in London and the subject of the two-day conference would be Nigeria in the MINT – Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey – predicted as the next most powerful economic bloc
According to the country director of the forum in Nigeria, who is also the Registrar/Chief Executive Officer of the Institute of Credit Administration (ICA), Dr. Chris Onalo, “the forum intends to capitalize on this current issue very quickly to further influence British trade and investment with Nigeria, especially going by the notion that UK companies are yet to view Nigeria as an important business and investment destination.
“Also, high profile businesses and investment organizations are scrambling to buy a space of prominence to showcase their business services to the international community during the conference expo.”
The term, MINT, was originally coined by Fidelity Investments, a Boston-based asset management firm and was popularized by Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs, who had created the term BRICS, an acronym for the economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The group of developing or newly industrialized countries was originally known as BRIC before the inclusion of South Africa in 2010.
The nomenclatures of economic trading blocs are becoming numerous: it all started with G8 (the great eight largest economies), G20 and then BRICS. The emergence of MINT has affirmed Nigeria as one of the four countries with bright economic prospects, where smart money should be invested. Of the MINT countries, he singled out Nigeria as having the ‘wow’ factor.
Jim O’Neil would be the keynote speaker at the event, which will provide him the opportunity to share his globally-acclaimed economic view at the Greater London Business conference. Alongside O’Neil are other globally respected speakers, including Prof. Pat Utomi, Prof. Sam Ohuabunwa, former president, Nigeria Economic Summit; John Momoh, chairman/CEO, Channels Television; Engr. Emeka Unachukwu, managing director/CEO, Morflex Energy and Power ltd; and Simon Brown, senior manager for East and West Africa, UKTI, London.
This is how Jim O’ Neil introduced MINT in his article in Bloomberg, which he delineated as the potential emerging investment destination: “I spent last week in Indonesia, working on a series for BBC Radio about four of the world’s most populous non-BRIC emerging economies. The BRIC — Brazil, Russia, India and China — are already closely watched. The group I’m studying for this project — let’s call them the MINT economies — deserve no less attention. Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey all have very favorable demographics for at least the next 20 years, and their economic prospects are interesting.
“Policy makers and thinkers in the MINT countries have often asked me why I left them out of that first classification. Indonesians made the point with particular force. Over the years I’ve become accustomed to being told that the BRIC countries should have been the BRIICs all along, or maybe even the BIICs. Wasn’t Indonesia’s economic potential more compelling than Russia’s? Despite the size of its relatively young population (a tremendous asset), I thought it unlikely that Indonesia would do enough on the economic-policy front to quickly realize that potential.
“Nigeria that has been denied membership of various neologisms of emerging economies including G20 and BRICS has finally made the list of MINT nations. Being given the due respect that Nigeria has been searching for does not transpire that the country has finally arrived. But making the list of MINT speaks volume and acknowledges that Nigeria is in the right direction. Nigeria is getting her economic house in order and doing those things she needs to do to be seriously noticed by frontier investors and money managers around the world.
“Nigeria is a middle-income, mixed economy and emerging market, with expanding financial, service, communications and entertainment sectors. It is ranked 30th (40th in 2005, 52nd in 2000), in the world in terms of Gross Domestic Product at purchasing power parity as of 2012, and 3rd largest within Africa (behind South Africa and Egypt), on track to potentially becoming one of the 20 largest economies in the world by 2020. Its re-emergent, though currently under-performing, manufacturing sector is the third-largest on the continent, and produces a large proportion of goods and services for the West African region.
“It is self-evident and a fact that Nigeria is potentially a wealthy nation that can make it to an industrialized economy but she has not been serious and has drowned herself in corruption and inefficiency, wallowing in self-pity and grandiose perception of her place under the sun. But Nigeria, once referred to as “sleeping giant” is steadily and gradually waking up from her sleep and commences turning a new page this time around.”
Interestingly, of the four MINT countries, Nigeria’s population is projected to outstrip other MINT countries by 2050 with population set to hit 402 million people. Of the four countries, Nigeria and Indonesia have the most consistent GDP at around six to eight per cent. The two countries have the lowest GDPs of the four MINT countries, at $1,555 and $3,557 per capita respectively, compared with $9,749 in Mexico, $10,666 in Turkey, and $51,749 in the United States of America, according to 2012 figures from the World Bank.
Jim O’ Neil’s views on Nigeria got a boost by the recent rebasing of the country’s economy. After months of faltering, owing to the complexity of the task, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) released the revised Gross Domestic Product (GDP) numbers. Nigeria‘s GDP has not been rebased since 1990, contrary to global best practice of re-benchmarking every five years. This implies that the country has had to rely on outdated figures for the last 24 years. The year 2010 was adopted as the base year for the revision and more recent economic activities have been captured in sectors such as telecommunications and entertainment industry.
As a result of the rebasing, the size of the Nigerian economy has grown by 89 per cent to N80.3 trillion ($509.9bn). This ranks Nigeria as the world’s 26 largest economy, the largest economy in Africa, bigger than Angola, Egypt and Vietnam put together, and 12 times the Ghanaian economy. The 89 per cent jump thumps the expectations and forecasts of analysts who projected an increase of between 40 and 60 per cent from the rebasing.
The Greater London Business Conference on Nigeria is coming on the heels of a recently concluded United Kingdom-Nigeria Trade and Investment roundtable, held in London by NILOBF in conjunction with the Business Chamber Trade Association of UK.
Nigeria’s ambassador to the UK, Dr. Dalhatu Sarki Tafida, had set the tone for discussions in his keynote address on activities of the Nigeria High Commission, London in the promotion of bilateral economic relations between Nigeria and the United Kingdom.
According to him, Nigeria and the UK have continued to enjoy cordial bilateral trade and economic relations due to historical antecedents and shared ties in language, education and legal system, which have reinforced the robust relations and positively impacted on the economic prosperity of the two countries.
He said: “Presently, Nigeria is UK’s second largest trading partner in Africa after South Africa and it is 32nd largest worldwide. The drive for improved trade and economic relations made the leaders of the two countries, President Goodluck Jonathan and David Cameron in June 2011 set an ambitious goal to double bilateral trade to eight billion pounds by 2014. Nigeria and the UK are very well on the way to achieving and possibly, surpassing the ambitious goal set by the two leaders.
“It is instructive to note that in 2011when the goal was set, the volume of bilateral trade was about four billion pounds and rose to seven billion pounds. There is also a conscious effort on the part of the two countries to diversify and shift focus from oil, financial services and food products, which had dominated Nigeria-UK trade relations in the past to the non-oil sectors, including agriculture, infrastructure, creative industry, information technology and retail business.
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