Nigeria’s business council completes 140 reforms in three years

The Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) has said it effected over 140 reforms geared towards making doing business easier for Micro, Medium and Small Enterprises (MSMEs), which makeup over 90 per cent of registered businesses in Nigeria and contributing close to 50 per cent of the country’s growth figures.

The Special Adviser to the President on Ease of Doing Business, Dr. Jumoke Oduwole, said the development presents the need to deliver measurable results and impact in the improvement of regulatory, bureaucratic and legislative environments for businesses operating in Nigeria, particularly MSMEs.

According to her, the reforms will not only be for the small businesses to thrive but for them to be able to compete favourably with counterparts globally.

While making the disclosures during the council’s sub-national tour in Lagos, business leaders, state officials and representatives of federal and state governments’ departments and agencies were on hand.

The event was focused on highlighting several economic reforms engineered by the Council since July 2016, to transform Nigeria’s business environment, while also revealing a sub-national tour of the six geo-political zones that offers entrepreneurs and other stakeholders an opportunity to collaborate more closely.

Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, commended the strength of the young Nigerian entrepreneurs as an engine of growth for the country, as well as the progressively-easier business landscape in Nigeria as a result of improvement in both physical and technological infrastructures.

Presently, Nigeria has moved up 24 places on the World Bank’s Doing Business Index Rankings since PEBEC began reforms in 2017, an attestation to the improved business environment.

Founder of Farmcrowdy, Onyema Akumah, also explained that his company has empowered over 70, 000 farmers through technology within three years due to the ease of doing business.

He said that the policy of Visa on Arrival has allowed the best talents and partnerships, stating that investors can now easily come into Nigeria and locate companies across the country on the map due to improved e-registration by the Corporate Affairs Commission.

The council said it is set to continue this celebration of enterprise through the Listen, Implement and Track (LIT) sub-national tour, even as it continues to deliver on its mandate of removing all bureaucratic constraints and bottlenecks to doing business, with a view to reducing the cost, time, and procedures required to start and efficiently run businesses.