CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION (BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY)
Part of developments in any country is widely held to be infrastructural. Infrastructural development, in a simplistic sense connotes the increase and improvement in industries and production processes leading to greater output of goods and services as well as the welfare of the entire citizenry. In Akwa Ibom infrastructural development has taken a central place in the various development plans or programmes with the ultimate goal of breaking the vicious circle of poverty and under development. Inspite of the loy development plans, which focused on infrastructural development in Akwa Ibom State, the state is still lagging behind when compared with some of its contemporaries in the league of states in Nigeria. With the burst in oil revenues and other rest natural resources, Akwa Ibom was viewed to have reached the turning point and set forth in the path to economic growth and industrial development. Contrary to expectation, Akwa Ibom is apparently lagging behind its aforementioned contemporaries.
There seems to be some missing links in the path to infrastructural development attempts have been made to explain the rather paradox; one key factor seems to the recurring and to which the backwardness in our infrastructural development have been attributed to. This of course is due to lack of sufficient capital. Infrastructural development involves massive and intensive Investment in Capital Stock i.e. Stock of productive assets. Since these represent long-term investment, it is thus expedient to source for the appropriate finance to meet the nature of investments financial institutions like banks are saddled with the important role of financial intermediation by mobilizing and channeling fund towards productive capacity generation and expansion.
Between 1987, when the state was created and 1999, Akwa Ibom has witnessed an exponential increase in the numbers of banks (commercial and merchant). Naturally, the same burst was expected in the level of savings and amount of loanable funds available for investment in the industrial sector that world take the economy out of the doldrums it would be an over-simplification to assume an equal proportional relationship between the numbers of banks and availability of loan able funds for infrastructural investment. To what extent have Bank been able to fulfill this all important role? It is widely held that banks in Nigeria have not performed adequately well in providing finances for infrastructural development. The banking sector is narrow and lack the depth that are critical in improving infrastructure and creating the conditions that are congenial for private sector participation in the infrastructural and industrial development processes. Akwa Ibom State Government, under the leadership of Obong Victor Attah, was able to establish a number of development strides to aid infrastructural development one of such stride was the establishment of investment and industrial promotion council tagged AKIIPOC.
The Akwa Ibom investment and industrial promotion council, AKIIPOC is a statutory body established by an act of parliament of Akwa Ibom state house of Assembly Owing to lack of adequate socio, economic facilities in Akwa Ibom State, it became imperative that in order for the state to undergo social and commercial transformation, the establishment of AKIIPOC was necessity.
1.2 AKWA IBOM STATE MAP
1.3 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Akwa Ibom State, with the population of 3.4 million people was created in 1987. Like every other state, Akwa Ibom faces numerous infrastructural challenges. Its unique set of challenges can therefore incorporate: very low per capital income, absolute poverty, inadequate infrastructural facilities, including water supply, unemployment, Urbanization poorly equipped laboratories and libraries and shortages of health services institutions. It is this sort of negative situation inspite of abundant natural and human resources that has warrant the investigation of the ways and means of financing the infrastructural facilities particularly in the state. Adequate infrastructural facilities are necessary for the overall development of every sector of the economy. In the wake of liberalization and globalization.
Its presence and importance for the proper growth of small and medium enterprises cannot be underestimated inspite of all this, the small and medium scale enterprises are constantly facing the problem of infrastructural bottlenecks, which restrict their day-to-day business operations as well as their future growth prospects infrastructure needed by entrepreneurs includes all kinds of transportation facilities like railways, waterways, roads and airways. Lack of any of these can cause serious damages to the firm’s value chain process, that is to the production consumption and distribution of the product of small and medium entrepreneurs, who already face problems of lack of finance, inadequate marketing facilities, technical obsolescence etc some of the major problems face by small scale entrepreneurs are: inadequate infrastructural facilities create the problem of acute shortage of basic raw materials, especially those that are scarce and needed to be imported from distance place, needed by small and medium scale entrepreneur or enterprises. Small and medium enterprises in Akwa Ibom state finds it difficult to distribute their product to the markets located at far o places because of incomplete construction or non-existence of basic roads
