Peter Mbah, the governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in Enugu State, has promised to arrest brain drain among the youths in the state, attract huge foreign direct and domestic investments and discourage multiple taxation through his economic policies if elected.
Mbah, who spoke at an interactive town hall meeting organised by the Enugu Sports Club, said his economic model had been designed to deviate from the established convention, which saw the state’s economy growing incrementally over the past decades, in order to speed up economic growth, according to a statement.
He said the state under his leadership would activate new structures that would enable the government depend less on federal allocations by harnessing the abundant resources and other potentials through public-private-sector partnerships.
He pledged that his administration would make the state a destination for investment, progress and development for the youths to realise their potentials through training in skills acquisition, vocational trainings, technology, and further empower them with N100 billion start-up capital.
Mbah expressed confidence that his planned Tier 4 hyper scale carrier/cloud neutral data centre in Enugu will equip youths with the infrastructure to acquire knowledge in ICT, artificial intelligence, robotics, mechatronics that will enable them compete globally.
He said his proposed $30 billion economy within eight years of his government is achievable with constructive investment through the attraction of a large market enabled by vibrant workforce and massive infrastructure that will make the state an eco-friendly business environment, and heavy concentration on key productivity sectors and other cross-cutting programmes as espoused in his manifesto.
Underscoring the strategic place of agriculture in driving the state’s economy, Mbah said the state has sufficient arable land for mechanised agriculture.
“Agro-allied processing industries will be established across different communities which will migrate agriculture from subsistence to profitable commercialized business ventures, and displace the existing pipeline mode of farming with a new platform structure,” he said.
He said he would create different economic zones in the three senatorial zones by deliberate policy of comparative advantage, adding that the energy and mineral sector will be given priority.
“This will enable industries to source their raw materials locally, process them into finished goods for export and generate huge revenue for both investors and workers,” Mbah said.
He said part of his plans to encourage more investors to see the state as lucrative is to derisk investment flow by overhauling the land tenure system that will remove unnecessary bureaucracy such that title deeds can be perfected within seven days, engage civil society organisations in budgetary regime, set up monitoring and evaluation committee through a set of measurable indicators that will allow citizens to assess the extent of the execution of his promises, and consolidate the tax regime that will discourage multiple taxation and extortion.
