Nigeria is still one of the most difficult and expensive places to register property in the whole world, the World Bank said on Monday in its 2014 doing business report, which also acknowledges the country’s tremendous progress in improving business environment in the last few years.
This year’s Doing Business report, the third in the series, finds that in the 36 Nigerian states and Abuja, an entrepreneur will need to go through 11 processes over 78 days, and pay 15.8 percent of the value of the property to transfer a property on the average.
The World Bank notes that the time to conclude this process is largely dependent on a single requirement – the governor’s consent, which accounts for 65 percent of the total time.
“This makes Nigeria one of the most difficult and expensive places to register property in the world, as measured by Doing Business,” the bank notes.
But wide sub-national differences emerge when analysing the 36 states and Abuja in detail. For instance, registering a property is easiest in Zamfara, where it takes 9 procedures, 31 days and 8 percent of the property value. But in Abia, this same process takes 13 procedures, 108 days and 15.9 percent of the property value to conclude.
Released on Monday in Abuja, Doing Business in Nigeria 2014 benchmarks 36 Nigerian states in addition to Abuja, FCT and covers four indicators: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, registering property, and enforcing contracts.
