By Jennifer Y Omiloli
According to the World Bank, the notorious challenges of doing business in Nigeria are slowly becoming simpler.
Nigeria is ranked 131 out of the 190 countries surveyed in World Bank’s latest Doing Business Report (15 places higher than last year).
The country is also named among the top best 10 improving economies globally for implementing regulatory reforms across six of the report’s 10 indicators.
Predictably, as a result of a government committee set up in 2016 to ease regulatory bottlenecks, the government has played the jump in rankings. President Muhammadu Buhari says in a tweet that the goal of the country is to break through 2023 into the top 70 ranked economies.
See tweet below:
Nigeria’s 15-place rise on the World Bank’s 2020 Doing Business Index is welcome news. We‘re now ranked 131st, from 146th last year; & up 39 places since 2016,when we established the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council(PEBEC). Our goal is a Top 70 position by 2023.
— Muhammadu Buhari (@MBuhari) October 24, 2019
While the efforts of the government to be aware of easing business regulations are praiseworthy and a departure from the past, implementing any reforms is completely different.
And, as in previous years, there is ample evidence to suggest that regulatory revolutions do not lead to actual impact for business folks in everyday situations.
As the World Bank’s report mostly focuses on regulatory environment rather than their effects, progress on paper can easily conflict with reality. For instance, getting credit, one of the report’s indicators, is measured by existing “movable collateral laws and credit information systems” rather than actual access to credit.
Cynics may argue that policymakers should simply focus on improving paper regulation to achieve higher rankings and useful political talk points.
The Doing Business report has other limitations: the realities of the informal sector (which accounts for up to 65% of Nigeria’s economy) are not being assessed, while the report only tests indicators in Lagos and Kano, the two largest cities in Nigeria.
