More than 180 reforms have been implemented by the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council with the goal of making Nigeria progressively better for starting and running businesses. The Business Facilitation Act 2022, which was just signed into law by Nigeria’s President, was discussed during stakeholders’ sensitization workshop in Abuja by Dr. Jumoke Oduwole, Special Assistant to the President on Ease of Doing Business and Secretary of PEBEC (retd).
According to Oduwole, the majority of the 180 reforms aimed to improve the performance of micro, small, and medium-sized businesses through affecting their life cycles. “From 2016 to 2019, Nigeria improved by more than 15.01 basis points in the World Bank’s flagship Doing Business survey, which was discontinued in 2020.
In the same period, Nigeria moved up 39 places in the World Bank Doing Business rankings and was twice named as one of top 10 most improved economies in the world,” she said. Oduwole noted that the reforms cut across automation aimed at minimising human intervention in regulatory processes, including regulatory reforms to enhance performance, cost-effectiveness, or legal quality of regulations as well as port/trade reforms to streamline and simplify procedures for trade.
The PEBEC scribe noted that there had been enforcement of Executive Order 001 directives and resolution of complaints via ReportGov. Most MDAs now have functional websites while 25 out of the MDAs tracked have adopted an online process for citizen application for services.
Punch.