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Uche Usim, Abuja
Soothing news came the way of Nigeria as Bretton Wood’s latest report on global ease of doing business ranking shows the country has moved up 15 places to 131st position.
Last year’s report put Nigeria at the 146th position.
The Bretton Wood Institutions, in its report released in the early hours of Thursday shows a comparison of business regulations in 190 countries across the globe.
It said: “Nigeria conducted reforms impacting six indicators, including making the enforcement of contracts easier, which placed the 200-million-person economy among the world’s top improvers. “Only two Sub-Saharan African economies rank in the top 50 on the ease of doing business rankings while most of the bottom 20 economies in the global rankings are from the region.
“Compared to other parts of the world, Sub-Saharan Africa still underperforms in several areas. In getting electricity, for example, businesses must pay more than 3,100% per cent of income per capita to connect to the grid, compared to just over 400% in the Middle East and North Africa or 272% per cent in Europe and Central Asia.
“When it comes to trading across borders and paying taxes, businesses spend about 96 hours to comply with documentary requirements to import, versus 3.4 hours in OECD high-income economies, and small and medium-sized businesses in their second year of operation need to pay taxes more than 36 times a year, compared to an average of 23 times globally.”
In an earlier statement released, the World Bank had named Nigeria as one of the top 20 Ease of Doing Business reformers across the world — the report says Nigeria is part of the top 10 reformers globally.
Apart from Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Togo, Bahrain, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Kuwait, China and India were also named as part of the top 10 reformers globally.
Experts say the government should continually strive to improve in the ranking in the interest of the country.
