Nairobi — Prime Minister Raila Odinga has urged French investors to explore the untapped potential in the Kenya market.

He told a delegation Thursday of visiting officials of multi national companies to seize the unexploited opportunities in the local market especially now that the country was geared towards promotion of infrastructural development.

The Premier encouraged them to engage the coalition government in Public-Private Partnership ventures for mutual benefit of all parties to facilitate the economic growth in the country.

"Our commercial sector is yours for the taking since the coalition government has prioritised infrastructural investment as the gateway to realisation of the vision 2030 dream," he declared.

He was speaking when the French delegation paid him a courtesy visit at his Treasury offices, Nairobi.

Among those present were the French ambassador and the Kenya Investment Authority managing director Susan Kikwai.

Mr Odinga said the government will eliminate bottlenecks that discourage investors such as bureaucracy, corruption and security concerns.

The PM challenged the developed world to open their markets to local products to bridge the trade imbalance to enable the country abandon aid handouts.

"Developing nations like ours is rich with unexploited resources, which when harnessed in a fair business environment could propel the country to a middle income economy sooner than expected" he said.

He informed the business community that the local economy was yearning for the input of the private sector to bridge the investment deficit the public sector was experiencing due to financial constraints.

He gave examples of the energy, transport, housing and the communication sectors where priority was placed but implementation of the developed blue prints was slow due scarce resources.

"We are actually shopping for partners to help us put a standard rail gauge network connecting Ethiopia, Sothern Sudan, and Uganda with the Mombasa and the proposed Lamu port," Mr Odinga said.

He told the investors to consider exploring ways of investing on green energy production after the hydro power generation proved challenging in recent times due to adverse climatic conditions.