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•Gombe maintains top spot, Edo ranked most difficult for business
By Steve Agbota
The Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) has rated Nigeria’s commercial hub, Lagos State and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja below average on Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) rankings per state.
PEBEC revealed this recently in the second edition of the Subnational Ease of Doing Business Report for 2023, which placed Gombe ahead of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.
According to the report, the nation’s average EoDB score is 5.69 but Lagos attained 5.16 points and FCT got 5.09 points respectively.
The report also indicated that Lagos dropped nine places to occupy 29th position having ranked 20th in the 2021 report while the FCT fell to 31st having been rated 17th in 2021.
However, Gombe, referred to as the jewel of the Savannah, recorded a weighted score of 7.15 to emerge as the state providing the friendliest environment for business.
The report placed Jigawa State as second with 6.79 points, followed in third by Sokoto State with 6.88 points. Conversely, Edo State was ranked the most difficult for business with 4.55 score.
Since 2017, the PEBEC has been implementing reforms aimed at removing bureaucratic constraints to doing business and to make Nigeria a progressively easier place to do business.
The 2023 Subnational Ease of Doing Business report builds on the inaugural Subnational EoDB Baseline Report released in March 2021.
A breakdown of the report by geopolitical zones shows that Plateau State with 5.8 points topped the states in North Central; with Gombe State who scores 7.15 points topping the states in North East; Jigawa State with 6.88 points topping North West.
Meanwhile, Anambra State with 6.19 points came first among the states in the South East; Rivers State with 5.76 pints on top of South South; and Ekiti State with 5.79 on top of South West.
The key findings from the survey indicate that there has been a marginal improvement in satisfaction with the ease of doing business in Nigeria from the 2021 baseline with the 2023 EoDB weighted score increasing to 5.69 (against 5.45 in the baseline).
Infrastructure and a secure and stable environment are the key drivers of satisfaction both accounting for 41.1 per cent (22.8 per cent and 18.3 per cent respectively) of satisfaction.
