A Professor of Business Studies at the University of Port Harcourt, Ebenezer Okonkwo, has urged investors to explore opportunities in non-food sector.
He said this would enhance business development.
Prof. Okonkwo gave the advice yesterday when he featured as a guest lecturer at a one-day sensitisation workshop for budding entrepreneurs at the Ministry of Defence Staff Agricultural Cooperative Society (MODACS), Port Harcourt, Rivers State capital.
He said investment in the food sector had been overburdened, resulting in unfavourable competition, low profit margin and increase in dearth of businesses.
Okonkwo said: “Opportunities abound in the non-food sector, which is begging for development. We are stressing the need for entrepreneurs to explore more into high dividend yielding non-food crops for local businesses and exports.
“Crops like dogoyaro oil, essential oil, castor oil and others have high market demand and high cost effect. They are available, yet investors are not delving into the huge opportunities. Whereas other countries are making fortunes from them.”
He identified funding, scarcity of loan facilities from banks and irregular power supply as some of the major challenges facing businesses and appealed to the governments to intervene to encourage investors to remain in business.
“The environment is not conducive for businesses. The entrepreneur has weak financial base and banks are not helpful. They chase away facility seekers with high interest rates.
“Poorly generated power supply is another serious issue bedevilling business development and frustrating entrepreneurs,” Okonkwo said.
He said businesses hardly survived the harsh infrastructural situation.
Prof. Okonkwo noted that the meagre profit entrepreneurs made were wasted on power supply through generators, while machines, which were acquired through loans, were left dormant following non-availability of electricity.
“The government is expected to intervene and ensure that loan facilities are made available and friendly, to boost industrialisation and reduce unemployment,” he said.
The President of MODACS, Babatunde Badamosi, said the society was founded in 2005 to assist members harness the entrepreneurial virtues in them, in order to create an alternative income base for them.
“We started in 2005 in Abuja and later spread to other states. We have done sensitisation in Lagos, Ibadan, Enugu, Kaduna before coming to Port Harcourt.
“The essence of what we are doing is to awaken the entrepreneurship virtue in members.
“There are four arms in the Ministry of Defence, namely the Army, Air Force, Navy and civilian arm, comprising the administrative workers,” he said.
At present, with over 3,500 membership, Badamosi said the cooperative was investing in real estate, adding that parcels of land had been bought in Rivers, Osun states and Abuja for interested members.