Cross River governor receives Taiwanese delegation, seeks business collaboration

Cross River governor receives Taiwanese delegation, seeks business collaboration

By Ashie Osor, Calabar

Cross River state governor, Sir Ben Ayade, Wednesday, at the state executive chambers, Governor’s office, Calabar, received a Taiwanese delegation, which is in the state to seek areas of collaboration.
Ayade said the visit is strictly a business visit, which the state is ready to take advantage of.

According to, “we are open, we are ready to engage with you, we are ready to support you and to work with you to develop our industrial park.
“For the first time, Cross River has decided to isolate herself from the country as a sub national to see how it can frog leap from a third world to a first world.”

While commending Taiwan for having a foreign reserve of about 500 billion USD with a relatively small population of approximately 23 million people, Ayade described it as a model the state wants to copy from.
His words: “It is a model that has excited me, my team and the state that we made a choice of Taiwan to visit amongst other countries to see the possibility of collaboration.”

The governor noted that Cross River has strong focus on industrial revolution similar to what Taiwan undertook years ago.
“No matter how your population is, if you don’t industrialise or develop a business attitude, if you don’t open up to the world, if you are sensitive to political barriers, you can never grow,” Ayade said.

He expressed optimism that the business relationship between the state and Taiwan “will be huge, our mutual benefits strong and the synergy can create opportunity for Cross River to finally escape from the level of poverty.”