Kwara Chamber wants state to set up marketing board

The Kwara State Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (KWACCIMA) has enjoined Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq to set up a marketing board and encourage commercial farming to make the state food basket and drive its economy to prosperity.

Ahmed Raji , president of KWACCIMA, made the plea when he led a delegation of the association’s officials to the government house in Ilorin, the state capital.

Speaking on a N500 million SME recovery fund recently announced by the state governor for business owners whose properties were looted in Ilorin, the association commended him for connecting urban to rural communities with feeder roads.

“Your Excellency has been doing wonderfully well. KWACCIMA is a body that doesn’t flatter people because when KWACCIMA sneezes, Kwara catches cold.

“So, as far as we are concerned, you are doing wonderfully well. Our coming here is to see how we can work with you and to see how we can drive the process together to make Kwara better.

According to Raji, the governor’s intervention for the looted businesses shows the present administration is committed to critical areas of economic development like infrastructural provision, investment and incentives.

He said the intervention would assist the victims to bounce back to business, urging the governor to sustain the tempo of infrastructural development which he said would help formal and informal sectors to grow.

Abdulrazaq, on his part, commended the body which he described as “the bedrock of what we want to do in Kwara which is to make the state an enterprising one which no longer depends on federal allocations.”

The government’s urgent intervention for the victims of looting, according to him, is to strengthen investor confidence in the state and prevent massive job losses.

The governor assured that the government is doing everything possible to raise its standing in the ease of business through the elimination of double taxation and easy process and issuance of Certificate of Occupancy, adding that the administration would look into the requests of the organised private sector such as industrial park, official documents for land earlier allocated to KWACCIMA, among other things.