Doing business in Nigeria getting easier – V.P. Yemi Osinbajo

Nigerian Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, SAN has assured Nigerians that doing business in the country is becoming easier going by the recent reforms embarked on by the Presidential Enabling Business Council (PEBEC) and currently being implemented by the relevant agencies.

The Professor who disclosed this at the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Clinic in Jos, said issues of new business registration, access to loans, certification of products, issuance of visas and import inspection were all being addressed under a new reform regime anchored by the PEBEC secretariat.

Yemi Osinbajo said,

“We tried to look at the various areas that make it particularly difficult to do business in Nigeria, for instance, for those who want to register companies it used to take a long time but now we have improved on that considerably.

“It is now possible for you to do a lot of business registration online. As a matter of fact by next month the portal facility of the Corporate Affairs Commission, CAC, would be completely online.

“We are using a private sector cyber resource called Main One which is providing all of the services for the CAC portal. So it can become much easier for us to use, I am saying that the Corporate Affairs Commission will now be online all the time.”

The Vice President further said,

“The other aspect of doing business that we are trying to do is with respect to ensuring that those who come in to Nigeria to do business find it easy to come in, we are making it easier for them to obtain visas on arrival.”

He also spoke on import inspections.

“Before now you had several documents to fill but we have reduced the number of documents by half so that you are not filling hundreds of documents’’, Osinbajo said.

He added that imported goods must henceforth be in pallets so that it is easier to inspect under a new joint inspection arrangement led by the Nigerian Customs Service.

According to him,

“We are trying to look for ways of ensuring that anyone who want to do business in Nigeria can do so without any pains and without any trouble at all.’’

As related to the MSMEs clinic, Osinbajo stated,

“Part of the ease of doing business is what we are doing here today – the MSME CLINIC.

“The whole idea of a clinic is almost like a hospital, but in this case it’s a mobile hospital. We are bringing the doctors here to meet with the manufacturers, with the small scale manufacturers.’’