Business environment: VP Osinbajo urges state governments to ensure success of reforms

Nigeria’s Vice President, Prof Yemi Osinbajo says state Governments and their agencies have a significant role to play in ensuring an enabling environment for businesses to thrive.

He said this at a virtual meeting of the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) where a presentation of the State Action on Business Enabling Reforms (SABER) Programme was discussed.

The Vice President’s spokesman, Laolu Akande said in a statement that the Programne was coordinated by the PEBEC Secretariat and the World Bank.

According to Akande, the SABER Program is a three-year (Jan 2023 – Dec 2025) performance-based intervention jointly designed by the World Bank and the PEBEC Secretariat with support from the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning and the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) Secretariat.

Akande said the purpose of the programne is to incentivise and strengthen the implementation of business enabling reforms in Nigeria specifically across the participating States of the Federation and the FCT.

“For all who are charged with responsibilities at the State level, you have your work cut out for you,” Akande quoted Prof. Osinbajo as having said at the virtual meeting.

“If we are going to have the kind of business environment that our country deserves and that can make a difference for our economy, it is the hard work at the sub-national level that would really move the needle.

“The states’ process is a very important one and I hope that we will be able to spend individually, especially in the States, a fair amount of time trying to work out how this will work in actual practice in our various States.”

Prof Osinbajo pointed out that at the federal level, trying to coordibate agencies and parastals haa been a major challenge.

Collaborations

In her own remarks, Special Adviser on Ease of Doing Business and Secretary of PEBEC, Jumoke Oduwole, stated that “we have been collaborating for over two years in conceptualizing the SABER Program,” adding that “it is the first programme of this size that the World Bank is embarking on at this scale globally.”

She explained that the programme is a $750million operation comprising two main areas – $730million Program-for-Results Financing (PforR) component and $20million technical assistance for investment project financing.”

The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed had made a formal request to the World Bank for the preparation of the State Action on Business Enabling Reforms (SABER) Program with Government Partners.

This was after a request came from PEBEC, through its Vice Chairman, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Otunba Niyi Adebayo, asking for the World Bank’s support for deepening ease of doing business reforms at the sub-national level.

Akande also listed the four main objectives of this PEBEC–NEC Ease of Doing Business intervention.

One of the objectives is to deepen subnational business-enabling reforms through SABER program incentives, using result-based financing targeted at improving the business environment.

PEBEC is also required to deliver technical assistance to all states to support gaps in reform implementation and provide opportunities for structural development and institutionalization of reforms across the country leveraging the PEBEC-NEC implementation structure.

It is also expected to ride on the back of State Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability (SFTAS) Programme, which has created a mutual accountability platform between the Federal Government and the States. The SABER will further consolidate and deepen gains from EoDB reforms implemented across the country.

It is also an objective of the Council to facilitate crowding-in private investments at scale, a key requirement for the achievement of Nigeria’s development priorities.

Hauwa Abu