Vice President Yemi Osinbajo yesterday launched the second National
Action Plan on Ease of Doing Business as part of the administration’s medium
term Economic Growth
and Recovery Plan (EGRP) to build a globally competitive
economy.
The Vice President had last week presided over an expanded meeting of the
Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) in Abuja.
A statement by PEBEC Secretary and Senior Special Assistant (SSA)
Industry, Trade & Investment in the office of the Vice President, Dr.
Jumoke Oduwole, yesterday said PEBEC had approved a second 60-day National
Action Plan (NAP 2.0) to drive reforms aimed at making Nigeria a progressively
easier place to do business.
She said NAP 2.0 will run from October 3 to December 1, 2017, and is
expected to further reduce the challenges faced by SMEs when getting credit,
paying taxes, or moving goods across the country, amongst others, by removing
critical bottlenecks and bureaucratic constraints to doing business in Nigeria.
The reforms, Oduwole explained, will also improve the country’s ranking in
the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index 2019.
The NAP 2.0 marks the beginning of another reform cycle 2017/2018 which
aims to deepen the ease of doing business reforms implemented across the
various Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) in the last 12 months and
will in turn increase productivity through industrialization, enhanced exports
and foreign exchange earnings, while creating jobs and reducing poverty.
Some of the reforms to be implemented to ease the process of starting a
business, the media aide said, include eliminating the manual registration
process at Corporate Affairs Commission in 10 additional states, increase
access to credit for SMEs by registering at least 300 microfinance banks on the
collateral registry, and enforce the elimination of illegal roadblocks on major
trading routes across the country.
MDAs have been charged by the Council to treat the Ease of Doing Business
initiatives with a sense of urgency and deliver impactful results by
implementing the Executive Order E01 on transparency and efficiency.
The Executive Order E01, which was signed by Osinbajo on May 18 this
year, ensures that citizens have complete clarity on all government
requirements and processes, better cooperation and improved information sharing
among MDAs, as well as requiring proper communication of approval or rejection
of applications to Nigerians within the stipulated timeframe.
PEBEC was established in July 2016 by President Muhammadu Buhari to
remove critical bottlenecks and bureaucratic constraints to doing business in
Nigeria.
Vice President Osinbajo is the Chairman of the Council, with the Minister
of Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr. Okechukwu Enelamah, serving as Vice
Chairman.
Ten other ministers, the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation,
Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, as well as representatives of the
National Assembly, Lagos and Kano states and the private sector are also
members.
The Ease of Doing Business reforms will be implemented over the next 60
days by the Enabling Business Environment Secretariat (EBES), which became
fully operational in October 2016.
The EBES is co-ordinated by the Senior Special Assistant to the President
on Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr. Jumoke Oduwole.
The World Economic Forum recently released its Global Competitiveness
Index (GCI) for 2017-2018, with Nigeria rising two ranks up from its previous
127th to 125th position.
“The tide is beginning to turn as last year; Nigeria was able to move up
marginally by one step from 170 to 169 in the 2017 World Bank doing business
report. The next report for 2018 will be released on October 31’’, Oduwole
said.
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