Vice President Yemi Osibanjo on Wednesday, April 3, presented a special recognition award to Oando alongside other private sector companies at the recently concluded Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) awards ceremony held at the State House Banquet Hall in Abuja, for their support of the PEBEC initiative.
The event marked the second annual PEBEC awards ceremony.
PEBEC was set up in July 2016 by President Muhammadu Buhari to remove critical bottlenecks and constraints to doing business in the country, and drive reforms to make Nigeria a progressively easier place to do business.
The Council is an inter-governmental and inter-ministerial one that is chaired by Vice President Osinbajo, and comprises 10 ministers, the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, representatives from Lagos, Kano State governments, the National Assembly and the private sector.
As of July 2016, Nigeria didn’t rank highly on the World Bank Doing Business Index (DBI), at position 169 out of 190 countries. However, following implementation of the over 140 reforms on ease of doing business, the country moved up the ladder by 23 places to position 146 in the World Bank’s 2019 Doing Business Index (DBI) ranking, four places above the PEBEC target for 2018.
The report, which was released on October 31, 2018, made this ranking following the assessment of 190 countries in the 2017/2018-reform year.
The Doing Business Index (DBI) is an annual ranking that objectively assesses prevailing business climate conditions across 190 countries based on 10 ease of doing business indicators. The Index captures ease of doing business reforms that have been validated by the organized private sector, and offers comparative insights based on private sector endorsement in the two largest commercial cities in countries with a population higher than 100 million; for Nigeria the two commercial cities were Lagos and Kano.
Some of the successful reforms include, the ability to complete the registration of a company within 24 hours online; the ability to apply for and receive approval of a visa-on-arrival electronically within 48 hours; ability to file and pay taxes online amongst others.
The awards ceremony recognised MDAs and sub-nationals that implemented impactful and landmark reforms in 2018; as well as key members of the private sector who particularly contributed to driving PEBEC’s overall reform initiatives.
In the “World Bank 2018 Subnational Ranking Award” category which considers how well State Government laws and regulations are designed for efficiency, transparency, accessibility, enforceability in courts and easy implementation, Kaduna, Enugu, Lagos, Abia and Anambra were recognised as the top five most reformed states in Nigeria for advancing the most towards the frontier of global good practices.
Speaking at the occasion, the Vice President commended the Minister of Industry Trade and Investment, Okey Enelamah, for his focused and forthright leadership, and also the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Industry Trade and Investment, Jumoke Oduwole and her team for their tireless efforts in ensuring the implementation of the ease of doing business reforms in the country.
The private sector partners referred to include Oando, First Bank of Nigeria, Crownscourt Attorneys, World Bank Group, KPMG, among others.
Oando was recognied for its role in capacity building, specifically providing strategic communication support as well as team-building and marketing communications training for the Enabling Business Environment Secretariat (EBES) team.
Speaking on the event, Chief Operating Officer, Oando Energy Resources, Ainojie Irune, who received the award on behalf of the company, said, “While it is clear that the Government, through PEBEC has done a commendable job in aggressively driving reforms to ease the process of doing in business in Nigeria, it’s imperative that we in the private sector continue to proactively look for opportunities to collaborate among ourselves and with the Government to bring about sustainable solutions that will move the country and economy forward.
“As a proudly indigenous company, we at Oando are strong advocates of combined capital and intellectual resources in the public and private sectors to yield tangible and lasting results, which is why we will continue to lend our support to lofty Government initiatives such as PEBEC.”
