Presidency plans law to institutionalize business reforms

The Presidency is seeking an omnibus law on business facilitation to institutionalize all the reforms primarily for ease implementation and sustenance of business reform efforts.

The proposed law, according to a statement Wednesday by the Special Adviser to the President on Ease of Doing Business, Dr Jumoke Oduwole, encompasses all business reforms into a single legislation.

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She noted that after implementing several policies that helped in deepening reforms at both the national and sub-national levels, Nigeria’s rating on the global scale of ease of doing business improved in 2018 and 2019.

She said the successes were driven by the implementation of over 140 reforms by the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council between 2016 and 2019.

Oduwole said the Enabling Business Environment Secretariat driving the reforms had in 2017, “sought and got the approval of PEBEC to adopt an Omnibus Bill as a legislative reform tool for business climate reform in Nigeria.

“Over the next few months the EBES team engaged with stakeholders across the legal and business community for their input, including the Nigerian Bar Association – Section on Business Law (NBA SBL) the Nigerian Economic Summit Group and the National Assembly Business Environment Roundtable (NASSBER) as well as other organized private sector stakeholders and members of the public at large.

“In Q4 2017, over 40 law firms from across the country supported an SBL Steering Committee pro bono to review and categorize the submissions received, which were then distilled into a document that formed the basis of the work of the drafting team from the Ministry of Justice that resulted in the earlier version of the draft bill prepared in 2018.”

She said the bill would amend some provisions of the present legislative framework identified by stakeholders as bottlenecks for the business climate reforms and introduce new provisions that would accentuate business climate reforms.

“The bill is now being reopened for review and further input because a number of the provisions earlier included in the draft have been addressed by the Financial Act 2019 and Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA) 2020,” she added.