Benue pledges to become industrial hub
The Benue State Government has reiterated its commitment to transforming the state into an industrial hub.
The Managing Director of Benue Investments and Property Company Limited, Dr Raymond Asemakaha, stated this on Monday during an inspection tour of the ongoing work on the polythene bags factory in Makurdi, a subsidiary of the bakery and bottled water company.
When completed, the factory is expected to employ about 100 youths.
Asemakaha promised that the company would deliver and roll out a new project every quarter.
The Managing Director inspected the polythene bags factory and another bakery located along the Makurdi/Naka road in Makurdi.
BIPC is a government-owned investment established to drive economic development, focusing on diverse sectors such as agriculture, infrastructure, real estate, and finance.
Earlier this year, the company established bakery and bottled water factories, which subsequently lowered the prices of bread and table water in the state.
He said, “One of the reasons we introduced polythene bag printing is that we have been printing in Lagos for over N27 million.
“But when we start in the next two weeks, we will be producing the nylon bags and pure water bags here, and we will also be doing the labelling here instead of sending our money to different states.
“We are doing this because we want to retain our cash flow within the system. We don’t want our money to flow outside. We want to keep it so that we can increase the state GDP from where it is now.
“Our aim is to establish an industrial hub in the state and within North Central Nigeria.”
The Managing Director stated that the company would soon expand the production of bread and bottled water across the state.
“Our intention is to expand our production to other local government areas in the state. That’s our goal, and we intend to begin extending to other local governments as soon as possible.
We don’t want to concentrate only on Makurdi. We want to reduce risk mitigation. One of our objectives is to start going to Otukpo, Gboko, and Katsina-Ala. We want to categorise them into different tiers, but I can assure you that every quarter, we want to deliver and roll out a new project,” Dr Asemakaha said.
(PUNCH)
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