From Uche Usim, Abuja
With World Bank’s latest report on ease of doing business indicating that Nigeria has moved up 24 points from 169th position to 145th out of 190 countries, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr. Okechukwu Enelamah, says the country has also improved in the area of easy access to credit.
He says Nigeria is now among the top 10 nations in that regard, assuring that the government will do everything within its powers to make Nigeria an investment haven.
He has also said that the government has over 100 more reforms to carry out between November and December all in its efforts to make Nigeria an investor’s delight.
Speaking with select journalists in Abuja recently, Enelamah enjoined Nigerians to work closely with the government in the urgent task of revamping the nation’s economy, especially now that such efforts are being appreciated by the World Bank, whose latest report on ease of doing business shows that Nigeria has moved up 24 points from 169th position to 145th out of 190 countries.
In this interview, he speaks more on government’s effort to grow the nation’s economy.
Excerpts:
New World Bank ranking
First, you are right to point out that it is an important development that the World Bank in its latest rankings just released few days ago, adjudged Nigeria to have moved 24 places after 10 years of decline and also recognised Nigeria as one of the 10 reforming countries of the world. It’s not something we take for granted because, first, it is good to see that if you adopt a purposeful approach to issues, you can get result because the President came and said one of the priorities is going to be making it easier for people to do business in Nigeria.
As you know, last year, he inaugurated and commissioned the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) chaired by the Vice President and it includes a number of other stakeholders like Ministers, Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of government that interface with the public. It also has the private sector players to ensure that we are getting results and we also know that we had the Executive Order passed earlier in the year.
We have been working on a number of reform measures which are the indices the World Bank measures. These indices are the life cycle of running a business from how you start a business, business registration to how you get the various permits, whether it is construction permit, acquisition permits, acquisition of land, paying your taxes, getting credit access to funding and credits all the the way to things around dispute resolution, to even insolvency, that is if you run into difficulties and all that. So, it is a life cycle of a business that the World Bank follows and there are 10 things it follows in the life cycle of a business. Nigeria was adjudged to have moved on at least five of them when we made the kind of progress the bank felt was quite significant and not surprisingly, around access to credit, we are now among top 10 in the world. The bills that were passed by the National Assembly were important; both the bills in terms of moving assets collateral and also in terms of the credit bills both of which sort of help SMEs and businesses in accessing credits.
They also liked the fact that we automated and made it easier to register businesses, we made it easier for people to pay their taxes, we made it easier for people at the state level when it comes to construction permits and dealing with things that have to do with land title; there were also some movements there. With things like access to electricity and some of the other areas, they think there is more work to be done and we can understand that those are the areas that need to be more structured; where you need to increase capacity and also leverage technology to get there. But the important thing is that in moving 24 places after sliding for so long, we know it shows that we are headed in the right direction and frankly, the momentum can continue because there are several things we are working on, as what you can call unfinished reform areas. But we are not resting.
Finally, I just want to point out that as important as the world ranking is, it is not the ranking per se that is the issue. It is making it easier for people to do business. The objective, what we are really looking at is, how can we make it easier for people to do business? How can we remove the bottlenecks and roadblocks and those things that get in the way of people running their businesses efficiently in Nigeria. Our vision and our objective is to make Nigeria one of most attractive and easiest places to do business in the world and that is also our mission.
Bureaucratic bottlenecks in registering businesses
You know the genius about Albert Einstein is that you talk about the theory of relativity. Most things are relative. So, when they say it is still not easy, we are saying it is easier. So, what you find is that when it comes to doing business, the processes are easier. By the way, if you go online now, you can do business registration within 24 hours with CAC.
Now, there might be subsequent things you need to do that might take a few more days but the important thing is that, one, the system is automated, which is a big deal. Two, all the key processes are linked into that automation, so it’s not like you do one thing online and you go and do the other thing manually. Three, we have continued to monitor for improvement and I agree with you that there is still room for improvement and we will keep getting better. Some will do it within a couple of hours in some countries. Here, we are still saying 24 hours. So I think things will continue to get better and we are committed to getting better. So it is a moving target. It is a journey and let me also say that one impressive thing about moving up 24 places is that, remember that the other countries are also moving. So, it means that people are moving and you overtook them. We overtook 24 countries and we believe we are not stopping. Our momentum is with us. So we will just keep going.
Hellish port clearance procedures
First, let me say that the port is an area of great interest and focus for us. There are several things we need to get right. First is the basic infrastructure of the ports. As you know, the Lagos ports are the busiest ports in the country. There is so much congestion because the ports are probably handling more cargo than they were meant for. There is a lot of challenge with the roads and exiting the ports, which, as you know, is receiving attention now. But it is also coming at some more considerable pain because it means that while the roads are being built, there is even more congestion.
There is also the whole idea of leveraging technology through a single window, which means that you are using technology to do all the processes and then all those people at the ports can then be at the back end of that electronic window. That is something that is receiving a lot of attention. We are not there yet but I think it is something between the Ministry of Finance, Customs, Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Ministry of Transportation and, of course, Trade. We are working together under the umbrella of the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council to ensure we make it easier and we use this single window to decongest our ports. Let me also say that in terms of the executive council, you are right. The executive order tries to streamline who should be in the ports and who should be out and that work is ongoing. Of course, some people might say we can’t leave until the automation is there because I don’t have the tools, so I cannot just leave yet. So there was a transition process that was meant to be shorter that has not been completed because we need to make the investments in technology.
Unfinished reforms
Let me answer it this way; first, the way the World Bank ranking works is that they actually talk to the users so they go and talk to the business people, the SMEs and so on and so forth. It is the feedback from them that goes in. So, if you are doing a reform, for instance, on access to credit, or paying taxes or dealing with obtaining electricity or construction permit, business registration and all the things I talked about and for some reason that work has not been completed (just like there are things we are still trying to automate we haven’t finished), it means the customer is not getting the benefit yet; you won’t get that credit. You have to complete the reform or the work and there are a number of reforms we are working on. You remember we had a 60-day National Action Plan (NAP) earlier in the year, tagged, NAP 60. We had about 50-something reforms that we scored ourselves 70 per cent. We are now going to a second wheel of reforms this November to December and the number of reforms are even more than 100. Some of them are small, some of them are big but they are all around this area of helping people do their businesses and the whole idea is that as we make those reforms, we will share them with the World Bank when they start doing their work and they will reflect them.
Let me also say that this will continue. We are not saying that ease of doing business can be solved in one year. I expect that this journey will continue for many years. We need to keep getting better and better because we are dealing with a moving target. The other countries are not standing still.
Institutional frameworks and sustainability
There are a number of things we are doing to ensure that the reforms will be sustained and also to codify the new rules and directives. One of the things that helped us is that we worked closely with the National Assembly and they passed a number of bills, at least two bills – the credit bureau as well as mobile access for collateral bills.
One of the things we are working with them now is what we call the Omnibus Bill, which will capture all the reforms we we are making and codify them so that they become law. So that they will be more difficult to change. But you also know that the executive orders are also some kind of laws. So, we hope that the requirements will become more and more entrenched and change the way people work. They become a new way of working because the same way we got into habits is the same way we need to get out of them. So, we are working on codifying these things into law working with the National Assembly.