By Modupe Gbadeyanka
On Tuesday, the World Bank Group published its Ease of Doing Business rankings and Nigeria, the largest economy in Africa, rose 24 places on the list to stay at 145 in the world.
Nigeria was among the 10 economies of the world to have recorded a significant improvement in their ease of doing business.
Economies are ranked on their ease of doing business, from 1–190. A high ease of doing business ranking means the regulatory environment is more conducive to the starting and operation of a local firm.
The rankings are determined by sorting the aggregate distance to frontier scores on 10 topics, each consisting of several indicators, giving equal weight to each topic. The rankings for all economies are benchmarked to June 2017.
In the report, the World Bank said, “Brunei Darussalam, Thailand, Malawi, Kosovo, India, Uzbekistan, Zambia, Nigeria, Djibouti and El Salvador were the most improved economies in 2016/17 in areas tracked by Doing Business.
“Together, these 10 top improvers implemented 53 regulatory reforms making it easier to do business.
“Economies in all regions are implementing reforms easing the process of doing business, but Europe and Central Asia continues to be the region with the highest share of economies implementing at least one reform—76 percent of economies in the region have implemented at least one business regulatory reform, followed by South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.”
The report features four case studies in the areas of starting a business, dealing with construction permits, registering property and resolving insolvency, as well as an annex on labour market regulation.
Earlier this year, as part of effort to make doing business easier in the country, the Federal Government signed some executive orders.
One of the orders was reducing the period business registration in the country. Also, efforts were made to reduce the duration of clearing of goods at the ports.
Adedapo Adesanya