NAN-HE-16
Progress
By Donald Ugwu
Abuja, March 22, 2017 (NAN) The Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC), says it has made progress in easing the way of doing business in Nigeria, 32 days after the it launched a 60-day national action plan.
Dr Jumoke Oduwole, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Industry, Trade and Investment, gave the indication while addressing State House Correspondents in Abuja on Wednesday.
Oduwole, who is also the Coordinator of the Enabling Business Environment Secretariat of PEBEC, said the council’s plan was to reduce the duration of doing business from 10 days to two days.
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“The Council just had a meeting to take stock of the 60-day National Action Plan that started on Feb. 21.
“This is midway; we are on a countdown, day 32, and the council was just looking at what we have been able to achieve over the last month and really discussing what is left.
“We have been able to achieve some things on starting a business – things such as uploading of forms and just simplifying the process.
“But we still have quite a way to take ourselves from 10 days of starting a business to two days.
“Also in the area of immigration, entry and exit of people, there has been a new visa policy that was released by the Minister of Interior last week. That has been gaining some traction.
“We also have a reduction of documentation on trading across borders, that is, the ports documentation, entry and exit of goods into the country.
“The council has basically been trying to ensure that Nigeria is a progressively easier place to do business.
“We have taken stock; we have scoped a number of reforms that need to be done in a quick, short term to make sure that Nigerian businesses are more comfortable.
“We are trying to save on cost and time and amount of documentation.
“We have also done quite a bit of work on transparency, web sites of different MDAs, to make sure that the processes, the procedures and cost and the people responsible are clearly laid out in a transparent manner.’’
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Oduwole said that the council was monitoring the 60-day action plan daily through the use of “mystery shoppers’’.
She said that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo was at the Airports which she described as “a very high profile visit’’.
She added that the council had people who also went through the Airports to make sure that directives issued by ministers were carried out.
“So what we want is not just power from the top or like the top-down, just to make sure that it drills right down the implementation with staff on the ground.
“And we will only know that by the testimonial of Nigerians when Nigerians start giving us the feedback that these things are working.
“When it is easier to start a business, easier to access credit and easier to pay your taxes then we know that the reforms are working,’’ Oduwole explained.
The SSA hinted that one of the empirical ways the council used to measure success was the World Bank Doing Business Report.
She observed that although the World Bank report was not about ranking but one that was adopted internationally.
She said about 190 countries were measured with the same methodology.
“It is not perfect but at least it is an objective score card,’’ she said adding that while the country had not performed as expected in the past it was able to stem the tide for the first time in 2016.
“In 2006 we were 94th position and we kept going backwards till last year for the first time we were able to reverse the tide and we actually did better, increased marginally.
“So now we have a focus, we have set ourselves the target of increasing at least by 20 places on the ranking and that is because the sub-Saharan average is in the 140s.
“As a leading economy, the least we could do is at least be with our peers,’’ Oduwole said.
On the possibility of reducing business transactions time to two days, the SSA said “it is possible to do business in two days.’’
According to her, the reforms are not just a wish list.
“We have gone through the procedures, we have seen that if you upload your documents, if we back-end some things it is not everything that a Nigerian entrepreneur needs to have to go from one office to another.
“The government is one and we talk to each other. So if you back-end, for instance stamp duties payment in starting a business, it has been integrated seamlessly on an on-line platform.
“It is just one process,’’ she explained. (NAN)
DCU/DOR/YEE
Editing by Nyisom Dore/Emmanuel Yashim
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