OCCIMA, Imo govt advised to collaborate on ease of doing business

OWERRI CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, INDUSTRY, MINES AND AGRICULTURE (OCCIMA), the apex body of the organised private sector (OPS) in Imo state currently headed by Anthony Amadi, a lawyer and the government of Imo state led by governor Hope Uzodinma have been advised to collaborate closely in order to improve the “Ease of Doing Business” in the State to enable both potential local and foreign investors to take advantage of such opportunity to come into the state and invest.

Everest Okpara, immediate past president of OCCIMA, MD/CEO, Everight Diagnostic and Laboraory Services limited and now the public relations officer(PRO) of the Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA ), said this in an interview, in Owerri.

“And during my tenure, I tried my best, to see to the repositioning of OCCIMA, and my promise and encouragement to the current president is to start from where I have stopped to see that he works closely with the state government to create quality collaboration in order to help Imo state in the Ease of Doing Business which is majorly what we are lacking here.

“Working with the local governments had been a whole lot of set back to the chamber as the coordinator of the organised private sector. I worked closely with the past administration before the present administration and as a result of some circumstances which you all know, coupled with Covid-19 , we could not do much last year,’ he said .

Okpara disclosed that, his administration did so much in the area of insecurity to ensure that the state has a serene environment for investors to come into the state for investment and also worked so hard to ensure that there was infrastructure , in the area of medical tourism and all kinds of tourism to come into Imo state but unfortunately non those things are working.

He iterated that his administration emphasised seriously about insecurity challenges in the state ,speaking seriously to people that matter but unfortunately they never listened to see how insecurity could be checked .

He advised the current president, Anthony Amadi to see the best he could do, and should not relent working with the state government “because Imo state is our state and we cannot leave it and go to any other state, so he has to work so hard, and I will still be supporting him from the background as the case may be. He is so lucky that I am at the national level as the public relations officer (PRO) of NACCIMA .So I am going to push from all angles to ensure that he succeeds in the next two years”.