The Lagos State government under the leadership of Akinwunmi Ambode says it is working tirelessly, through multi-sectoral reforms, to enhance ease of doing in the state and attract direly-needed foreign direct investments.
At an Ease of Doing Business reform validation workshop organized by the Office of Overseas Affairs and Investment (Lagos Global) in Lagos last Thursday, heads of different ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) of the state who were present took turns to highlight the reforms already embarked upon by their units to make Lagos a more business-friendly environment as well as the remarkable improvements that have taken place.
The workshop attracted key players from the private sector, the World Bank Group as well as officials of the Lagos State government.
Ademola Abbas, a professor and special assistant to Governor Ambode on Overseas Affairs and Investment, said the essence of the workshop was to showcase to the world what Nigeria, and in particular Lagos, has been doing in terms of enhancing the ease of doing business.
“The whole essence of this workshop is trying to understand what and what we need to do as a government to enhance ease of doing business. We have got indications from the World Bank Group about how the scorings are done; they have suggested some measures that have to be put in place by the Lagos State government in terms of enhancing ease of doing business in Lagos,” Abbas told BDSUNDAY on the sidelines of the workshop.
“Now what is important for us as a government is to sit back and reflect on whatever measures they have put across and for us to decide in-house what strategies we are going to adopt to be able to implement these measures. We have to look first at the framework, we have to look at what they are giving us, we have to look at what we’ve been doing and how we can enhance what we have been doing from the information we are getting from the group,” he said.
Abbas assured investors that the state was working assiduously to make Lagos an investor’s haven by eliminating all bureaucratic bottlenecks, which was why Governor Ambode created the Office of Overseas Affairs and Investment as a one-stop shop for investment.
Boladele Dapo-Thomas, permanent secretary, Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban Development, said her ministry was already joining hands with the state governor to ensure a friendlier business environment in Lagos State and attract the much-needed investors.
“In all that we do at the ministry, especially the grant of planning permit which is one of the indicators that we are looking at today, we are looking at our business processes. Already we have an e-planning permit platform to facilitate and accelerate the grant of planning permit in Lagos State. We are also looking at other strategies in-house to ensure that we facilitate even all the documentation and we are talking with our colleagues in other ministries to see where our dependencies can also be fast-tracked,” Dapo-Thomas said.
“At the end of the day we are looking at granting of planning permits in the least possible time. We already have it decentralised. There are planning permits you can get at a much lower level at the district offices, and there are some that will have to come to my table. But it is about getting it fast-tracked, which will ultimately will help us ease doing business in Lagos,” she added.
Folarin Ogunsanwo, chairman, Lagos Inland Revenue Service (LIRS), said the service has, on its part, gone ahead to simplify the tax payment processes in the state to enhance the ease of paying taxes, which is also one of the indices measured in the Ease of Doing Business ranking.
“For us in LIRS, we have identified that the ease of paying taxes was one of the issues raised by the World Bank where we came 181 out of 189 countries ranked. We have looked at the issues raised and what we have done is to simplify filing of returns. We have gone ahead to compress the six-page tax form used by taxpayers to file returns to two pages, and it comes with a guide to explain where, how and when you pay your taxes,” Ogunsanwo said.
“Not only that. We have also gone ahead, especially because of our people in the informal sector, to produce those forms in English, Yoruba and Pidgin English. We have also observed that for payment of taxes and revenue you still have to go to the banks, so we have also gone ahead to deploy PoS terminals at our 38 tax stations. There is hardly any Nigerian that does not have ATM card, so we want them to take advantage of their ATM cards to pay their taxes, and we are also trying to automate so that people can actually pay online,” he added.
Ogunsanwo further said consultants were also looking at other avenues of tax payment to make things easier for businesses.
“By simplifying the forms and opening up other channels of payment, we want to believe that this will engender voluntary compliance and also help in improving the ease of doing business in Lagos as well as Nigeria as a whole,” he said.
Commissioners for Tourism, Transportation, Housing, and others present also highlighted the efforts of their various ministries to make doing business in Lagos much easier.
Nigeria ranks 169 out of 189 countries in the latest World Bank Ease of Doing Business Index, just a notch up from its former 170th position. Lagos State alone accounts for 73 percent of this rating, while Kano accounts for 27 percent. This implies that enhancing the ease of doing business in Lagos will ultimately improve Nigeria’s overall ranking.
CHUKS OLUIGBO
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