FG assures stakeholders of enabling business environment

The federal government has assured stakeholders in Nigerian business community that it will promote enabling business environment in a sustainable manner.

Speaking at a breakfast meeting organized by global financial consultancy firm, KPMG Financial Services, in Lagos on Tuesday, the Minister of Trade and Investment, Dr Okechukwu Enelamah, stated that creating enabling environment is key to solving Nigerian economic challenges and that the government has identified it and set up machineries in motion to tackle it.

According to him, “when I was invited to join the government from the private sector, is as asking people about creating enabling environment by building trust, confidence and structure. We made a choice that this will be one of the priorities of the government.

“We have observed that there exists strong correlation between ease of doing business ranking and economic prosperity. If we do this, business will prosper and Nigerians will prosper as well. There is room for improvement, but we know that there is big work to do. Nigeria has been falling behind on key economic indicators over the last few years.”

He noted that one of the reasons dollar scarcity is prevalent in Nigeria is because the country is not doing enough to attract foreign investors with huge financial potentials into the economy.

“The President and the Vice President shared the view of providing enabling business environment and I am sure it is going to happen. We have constituted Presidential Business Environment Council chaired by the Acting President and Vice-chaired by Minister of Trade and Investment. We meet monthly to provide coordination across ministries and bottlenecks challenges,” he said.

He pointed out that three priority areas of the committee include entry and exit of people, goods and transparency.

“With these, we ensure that we improve the ease of obtaining Nigerian visa and upgrading the Lagos and Abuja airports; reducing the process, timelines and documentation of importation of goods. We have simplified visa application and submission processes, visa on arrival has been approved and there is 48-hour visa processing abroad.

“We have also introduced single form on arrival/departure to reduce travel burden on travelers. Communication to improve transparency and accountability because lack of confidence and trust will make business suffers,” he stated.