Cross River launches international fair to revive Tinapa

The Cross River State Government has announced the launch of the Calabar International Trade Fair (CITF) with the first edition billed to hold in December 2016 as part of activities for the Calabar Carnival.

Disclosing this at the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the management of Tinapa Business Resort and Cliqit, an e-commerce business management and development, Asuquo Ekpenyong, Cross River State commissioner of finance and managing director of Tinapa, announced that the initiative was aimed at reviving the Tinapa project and put it where it was projected to be.

“We have gone through the blueprints; we have identified those issues that prevented Tinapa from going where it should be and we are trying to tackle those issues with a fully detailed plan,” Ekpenyong said.

“One of the ways we think we can do that is to have an international trade fair, something that would be around the period when Cross-River would be at its peak in terms of travellers. That is the week of the Carnival in December.

“We have chosen that date for obvious reasons in terms of the influx of people and Calabar which should be a major trade hub isn’t where it should be, so, we have partnered with Cliqit. They will be bringing their experience and capacity in driving trade traffic to Tinapa and we will provide the resources,” he added.

The brain behind the project, Gerald Konwea, who is the founder/CEO of CliqIt, said the carnival was capable of breaking the record for the highest number of vendors at a fair with a targeted vendor population of 10,000.

“This is going to be arguably the biggest trade fair in the world. There are big trade fairs in Germany with up to 7,000 vendors and there are even bigger trade fairs in China. Except the numbers are on Chinese websites, there are no numbers on Google or websites that reflect on Google to suggest otherwise,” Konwea said.

Asides the obvious tourist gains the project is expected to bring to Cross River State, the Calabar International Trade Fair is also aimed at increasing the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of the state up to N5 billion, introduce up to 15, 000 jobs and 10, 000 Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) and empower people of Cross-River state with skill acquisition and go-to market strategies and ultimately contribute development of the state.

Asides the aforementioned, statistics reeled out by Konwea said the IGR of the state is expected to significantly rise from N12.7 billion to N14.9 billion yearly between 2016 and 2019 and an additional N2 to N5 billion from 2020 onwards.

 

ODINAKA ANUDU