The Lagos Chambers of Commerce and industry and the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria have called for improvement in the Ease of Doing Business in Nigeria.
This follows the recent drop recorded by Nigeria in the report of World Bank’s ease of doing business index for the year.
Ease of doing business, an index published by the World Bank, is an aggregate figure that includes different parameters which define the ease of doing business in a country. It is computed by aggregating the distance to frontier scores of different economies.
The World Bank, had last week, released a report that Nigeria now ranked 146 out of 190 countries in the Ease of Doing Business index for 2019
The President of the World Bank Group, Jim Yong Kim, said, “Governments have the enormous task of fostering an environment where entrepreneurs and small and medium enterprises can thrive.
“Sound and efficient business regulations are critical for entrepreneurship and a thriving private sector. Without them, we have no chance to end extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity around the world,” he said.
According to the report, a total of 107 reforms were carried out in sub-Saharan Africa, a record for the region.
A statement by the bank read in part, “Nigeria carried out four reforms, which included making starting a business easier in Kano and Lagos, the two cities covered by Doing Business.”
Reacting to the report, in a recent chat, the Director General Lagos Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Dr. Mudashiru Yussuf, said he identified lack of infrastructure, Apapa traffic gridlock, trading across borders, challenges of documentations, among others as the reason for the drop.
According to him, “The drop is a marginal drop, but whether we talk about 145 or 146, it’s still low and that underscores the need for us to do more in the business environment.
“Because if there is anything that is slowing down the growth of this economy, it is the challenges that investors are facing in the business environment, so this report only underscores the need to urgently do something to ensure that we improve on the ease of doing business.
“Although we must acknowledge what government have been doing in the business environment, we must also acknowledge that in the last ranking Nigeria moved up by 24 points which was significant, but there is still yet a lot of job to be done so as to make the business environment conducive for investors.
“Our infrastructure is still a very difficult one, which is affecting the ease of doing business and competitiveness of firms in the economy, also trading across borders, challenges of documentations, challenges with the Nigeria Custom services and other agencies at the border posts and of cause the Apapa traffic gridlock still stands as the major bottlenecks affecting the ease of doing business in the
country.
” Also credit is still a very big problem for the economy, although government is coming up with all sort of financing like the ‘trader money’ but credit is still a very big problem for the economy from the angle of interest rate to the tenure of the credit, most of the loans are short term, so this are the things I think government need to tackle.
“Also putting in place our railway system, this is very important, so that we we don’t put too much load on the road because road transportation also makes a lot of products expensive across the country, and this affects profit margin, it affects competitiveness and a whole of things.”
Also reacting to the report, the president , MAN , Engr. Ahmed Mansur, opined that Nigeria’s present position on the global index is as a result of various bottlenecks and insecurity hindering ease of doing business in
Nigeria.
” It’s obviously not a healthy development, one would expect particularly after the efforts made by government at various levels to improve the ease of doing business, it is sad that instead of going up the rope, we are going down from 145
to 146
“Well, it’s not a big move, but its a move in the wrong direction, one would have thought that with the presidential committee on enabling business environment we should show some positive development.
“We are still hopeful that the situation will improve and some of the initiative of the government will yield positive result.
” The infrastructure has been a major problem, also the general insecurity in the country is also not helping issues and this is discouraging investors, also over the past three years despite all the efforts made by the government, the investment planet has not really been conducive even for local businesses, but we are hopeful that things will get better in the coming year,” he said.
