In 2016, when the PEBEC \u2013 Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council was launched, there was little hope as to whether its ambitious mission will be achieved anytime soon. However, last week in an interview after opening the Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Forum in Lagos, Nigeria, the vice president claimed that\u00a0the initiative had achieved 70 per cent success<\/a>\u00a0in its 60-day national action plan and has started the second 60-day national action plan. This initiative places a lot of emphasis on improving the ease of doing business in Nigeria by focusing on 8 reform areas which are: starting a business, construction permit, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, paying taxes, trading across borders, and entry & exit of people.<\/span><\/p>\n PEBEC was set up in July 2016 by the current administration in an effort to remove bureaucratic constraints to doing business in Nigeria and make the country a progressively easier place to start and grow a business. This is justified by the fact that Nigeria currently ranks poorly in the\u00a0World Bank ease of doing business ranking<\/a>, holding the 169th<\/sup>\u00a0position out of the 190 ranked countries in 2017; a one step up from the 2016 ranking where Nigeria took the 170th<\/sup>\u00a0position.<\/span><\/p>\n Also, in the recently published Fraser Institute\u2019s\u00a0Economic Freedom of the World<\/a>\u00a0(EFW) 2017 report (which is for the year 2015), Nigeria ranks 114th<\/sup>\u00a0out of the 159 countries with available data. However, the country was ranked 116th<\/sup>\u00a0in the 2016 report, representing a 2 step improvement over a year. The EFW index provides a comprehensive measure of the consistency of a country\u2019s institutions and policies with economic freedom.<\/span><\/p>\n These poor ranking of Nigeria clearly suggests that several things are not being done rightly in Nigeria when it comes to business and entrepreneurship. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) have been described by many experts as the engine of economic growth and prosperity and that much emphasis in needed in this aspect. However, small businesses are faced with many challenges among which are access to capital, poor infrastructure, government bottlenecks, security, and so on.\u00a0Difficulty in registering businesses, getting permits, etc.,\u00a0 frustrate entrepreneurs<\/a>\u00a0and slows the rate at which new businesses are created.<\/span><\/p>\n Interestingly, the PEBEC intends to tackle these challenges through the national action plans and the executive orders released earlier this year. In July, 2017, the\u00a0vice president signed 3 executive orders<\/a>\u00a0aimed at removing all bureaucratic\u00a0 bottlenecks that had stifled growth of businesses in Nigeria. While this is laudable, many of these bottlenecks still persist and the need remains for the federal government to double its efforts in order to make meaningful progress in easing the doing of business and entrepreneurship in the country.<\/span><\/p>\n
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