After taking stock of the progress on its policies at enhancing country’s business environment, the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) on Tuesday set new baseline target for assessing the performance of all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of government under the National Action Plan on Ease of Doing Business, in Nigeria.
Minister of Trade and Investments, Okechukwu Enelamah disclosed this Tuesday, after an expanded meeting hosted by the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Enelamah, speaking with State House Correspondents after the meeting, said it was a stock taking meeting, which was also used to set fresh perspective for all the MDAs
“We have taken stock what we have achieved already, the journey so far with a plan on the way forward the idea being that we want to have a second round of the national action plan which is even more ambitious than the first one. We really want to make it easy for people to do business in Nigeria.”
For the first time, the meeting brought together major stakeholders in government including the Chief Justice of the federation, Justice Walter Onnoghen, Senate President who was represented by Bala Ibin Na’allah, a senator, and other top officials of the MDAs.
These were part of the ingredients at the meeting which also had a strong representation from the private sector to ensure that the collaborative exercise works very powerfully to deliver impactful reforms for the Nigerian people.
Describing the meeting as “very successful” Enelamah said the enabling business environment council was expanded to bring in Chief Justice of Nigeria, representative of senate president, as well as those of the Lagos and Kano government
Also speaking on the outcome of the meeting, Bala Ibin Na’allah, who represented the Senate President, said the National Assembly was strongly behind the federal government in developing appropriate policy to change business practices in Nigeria
“In interim report of PEBEC, the National Assembly got green for compliance with all the commitment we have made as our contribution on to the ease of doing business.
“We the only arm of government that got full green for full implementation of whatever commitment we gave as a National Assembly facilitating the project for enabling business environment in nigeria.”
Chika Emodi, MD/CEO of National Competitiveness Council of Nigeria, Chika Emordi, on his part, noted that more work has been done to bring the situation where it is now.
“There is no doubt that we have a commitment on the part of government and we are very optimistic about how this will translate to a better business environment for the country.”
Jumoke Oduwole of the National Competitiveness Council of Nigeria, said the Council is collaborating to ensure the success of the sub-national project.
“We are going to working with all the states and the FCT in making sure that we are not just focusing on the federal level, we are taking ease of doing business state wise. We are collaborating widely with the private sector, all state governments, the National Assembly again of course.
“We are going to have an omnibus bill that will wrap up all the irritant but most importantly, we are lunching a new 60 day action plan starting from 2nd of October running to the 30th of November and we are going to have the press pack that will contain all the reforms that all the MDAs are going to be working on.
“It is going to be a very exciting time and we are looking forward to tangible deliverables for the Nigerian people.
“We want the business climate to be simpler, you don’t need to know anybody to do business effectively in Nigeria. Larger companies ally of the time have different kinds of problems, we want systemic change for small and medium size enterprises. We had the acting DG of NAfDEC, DG of SON, we had heads of police, immigration, customs, ports authority, the airport, the judiciary.
“We critical bottlenecks and bureaucratic constraints to doing business in Nigeria, as well as move Nigeria 20 places upwards in the World Bank Doing Business Rankings.”
