Ekiti attracts $100m agric investments in two years

The Governor of Ekiti State, Dr Kayode Fayemi, has disclosed that his administration’s ease of doing business policy and other vital supports for investments has attracted over a million dollar agribusiness investment into the state in the last two years.

Dr Fayemi stated this on Tuesday, during the commissioning of a multi-million naira integrated snail farm in Okemesi-Ekiti. The Egbeja Snail Farm is a private initiative of Farmkonnect Agribusiness Nigeria Limited.

The Governor said many investors prefer to invest in the state because of the ease of doing business policy of the administration and sundry support the government offers prospective investors, including land and tax holidays.

“You will recall that the State Government efforts on agriculture and agribusiness over the last two years had already attracted almost a hundred million dollars investment in the agricultural sector to Ekiti State via the Ikun Dairy Farm by Promasidor Nigeria; FMS Agro, JK Rice, Stallion Rice, Dangote rice, Promise Points and many more that are located in our special agricultural processing zone where all the facilities are being provided such as good roads, irrigation, schools etc.

“Our ease of doing business personnel would continue to work with all investors while intending investors will enjoy necessary support including ease of doing business registration, land allocation, issuance of C of O and tax holidays for certain category of business,” he added.

Commissioning the multi million naira Egbeja Farm, Governor Fayemi promised to continue to provide enabling environment and strengthen the ease of doing business policy to attract more investors into the state.

The Governor said the new snail farm, when completed, would produce a minimum of 2,600 metric tons of snail per annum and provide opportunity for the extraction of slime for use by beauty care and pharmaceutical companies across the world.

He said the project would not only place Ekiti in the world market for the exportation of snails and slime but would also complement the vision of his administration in providing job opportunities for the teeming youths as the project has the capacity to engage over a 2,000 thousand personnel across various sectors of the initiative.

Dr. Fayemi who undertook a guided tour of facilities on the farm, explained that the Egbeja snail village project was a demonstration and commitment of his administration’s quest for a complete agribusiness value chain “from farm to fork where there will be value addition that would go beyond primary production to include processing, marketing and delivery to our various dining table.”

He said: “Only last week, we flagged off the first phase of a 1,000-kilometre rural access and Agricultural Marketing Project, our RAAMP initiative, which is a state wide rural road project. This is an addition to the ongoing road projects that cut across the three senatorial districts of Ekiti State.

“Our rural road project is strategically structured to link our farmstead and hinterland to the major road in order to enhance movement of farm produce to the market and by the time we complete all the ongoing road project particularly the ring road and the cargo airport, agribusiness in Ekiti State will experience unprecedented growth.

“We are busy laying the foundation for the projected economic growth and urged other investors to key into our innovative agenda.”

Earlier, the initiator of the project and founder of Farmkonnect Agribusiness, Azeez Oluwole, said the project was proposed to occupy a 100,000 square meter of land to make it the largest place of snail farms in Africa and the second in the world.

He said the construction of the structures of the farm which is massive would continue for the next two years and is going to be technologically driven.

According to him, the setting up of the snail project in Ekiti was informed by the friendly investment environment made possible by the ease of doing business policy of the Fayemi-led administration.