JOHANNESBURG, Aug 24: Nigeria hopes to more than double foreign direct investment to $5 billion a year thanks to investor friendly policies and a concerted government effort to court foreign business executives, an official said on Wednesday.

Mustafa Bello, head of the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission, told Reuters a crop of tax incentives plus a new presidential committee that woos foreign CEOs would boost investment in Africa’s most populous nation.

“As we improve policies we are attracting more investment,” Bello said on the sidelines of a Nigeria-South African investment conference in Johannesburg.

“We should be able to do $5 billion a year, and after we open up the GSM (mobile phone) market further that will help us fast-track (investment).”

Nigeria attracted about $2 billion in foreign direct investment last year, with most going to its key oil sector, and delegates at the conference said this must improve to help boost economic growth and tackle poverty.

Despite oil wealth as an Opec-member, Nigeria is one of the world’s poorest countries on a per capita basis because of its huge population and its image as a corrupt nation, which means it receives less aid than other sub-Saharan African countries.

Opening up the telecoms market — by part-privatizing the national phone carrier and allowing more companies to run mobile phone networks — will bring in more foreign cash, Bello said.

Egyptian telecoms company Orascom, which has bid for a majority stake in Nigeria’s national phone carrier Nitel, was interested in further investment after a five-year exclusivity window for existing mobile operators ends next year.

South African mobile operator MTN has notched up stellar growth in Nigeria, where mobile phone ownership is still comparatively low, and rival Vodacom and Britain’s Virgin are poised to take a majority stake in the country’s third-biggest operator VMobile.

Nigeria also wants to beef up investment in its banking, solid minerals industry, agriculture, manufacturing, energy and tourism industries and had reinstated a package of incentives designed to boost its non-oil export sector.

A clutch of South African companies are already making inroads into Nigeria, attracted by largely untapped markets for telecoms, retail and entertainment.—Reuters