The World Bank has reported that Nigeria now ranked 131st position in the global Ease of Doing Business, indicating that the country moved up by 15 places from the 146 position it was ranked in 2019.
The Breton Wood institution stated this in its latest Ease of Doing Business ranking report published on Thursday.
The report indicated that amongst the factors that influenced the country’s improved ranking was that the country conducted reforms impacting six indicators, including making the enforcement of contracts easier, which placed the 200-million-person economy among the world’s top improvers.
Even then, the World Bank reported that despite Nigeria’s latest ranking, only two Sub-Saharan African economies ranked in the top 50 on the ease of doing business rankings while most of the bottom 20 economies in the global rankings were also from the region.
The bank stated further: “Compared to other parts of the world, Sub-Saharan Africa still underperforms in several areas. In getting electricity, for example, businesses must pay more than 3,100% per cent of income per capita to connect to the grid, compared to just over 400% in the Middle East and North Africa or 272% per cent in Europe and Central Asia.
“When it comes to trading across borders and paying taxes, businesses spend about 96 hours to comply with documentary requirements to import, versus 3.4 hours in OECD high-income economies, and small and medium-sized businesses in their second year of operation need to pay taxes more than 36 times a year, compared to an average of 23 times globally”, it added.
The Doing Business Index is an annual ranking that assesses prevailing business climate conditions in 190 countries based on 10 indicators.
The index covers ease of doing business reforms that have been validated by the private sector and offers comparative insights based on private sector validation in the two largest commercial cities in countries with a population higher than 100 million.
In the Nigerian case, Lagos and Kano States were profiled in the latest report.
Reacting to the country’s latest ranking, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Otunba Niyi Adebayo said that the report demonstrated the commitment of the Buhari-led administration to make the nation’s economy more investment-friendly over the past few years.
He enthused: “The steady improvement in Nigeria’s ease of doing business score and rank is a testament to the reforms implemented by this administration over the past four years in line with the reform agenda being implemented at national and sub-national levels across the country since the establishment of the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council by President Buhari in July, 2016.”
It would be recalled that the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, had on Tuesday received the 2019 Compliance Report of the Presidential Executive Order 001 on the promotion of transparency and efficiency in the business environment.
