The World Bank Tuesday said Nigeria was inching closer to the global best practice in business regulations since 2009.
A new report by the Bretton Woods institution and its member, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), observed there had been remarkable progress in efforts to comply with global standards in the areas of doing business between June 2012 and June 2013.
The report titled “Doing Business 2014: Understanding Regulations for Small and Medium-Size Enterprises,” further stated that the country had already implemented some of the global good practices in the areas of Doing Business by allowing for a general description of collateral, which made it easy for local entrepreneurs to get credit.
It noted that since 2005, Nigeria had implemented 10 business regulatory reforms which made it easier for local entrepreneurs to do business, adding that the biggest impact was in the area of getting credit, where the country had improved its credit information system through a Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) guideline defining the licensing, operational and regulatory requirements for a privately owned credit bureau.
It noted that Nigeria was among 10 economies in the world that made the biggest improvement in getting credit since 2009.
The Director, Global Indicators and Analysis, World Bank Group, Augusto Lopez-Claros said: “Business regulatory environment requires strong and sustained actions. I look forward to Nigeria’s continued commitment to make the regulatory environment easier for the local entrepreneurs in the coming years.”
Singapore led on the global ranking on the ease of doing business. Others on the list of top 10 economies with the most business-friendly regulations are Hong Kong SAR, China; New Zealand; the United States; Denmark; Malaysia; the Republic of Korea; Georgia; Norway; and the United Kingdom.
In addition to the global rankings, every year ‘Doing Business’ reports the economies that had improved the most on the indicators since the previous year. The 10 economies topping that list this year (in order of improvement) include Ukraine, Rwanda, the Russian Federation, the Philippines, Kosovo, Djibouti, Côte d’Ivoire, Burundi, former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and Guatemala.
The report added: “The economies ranking highest on the ease of doing business therefore are not those with no regulation but those whose governments have managed to create a regulatory system that facilitates interactions in the market place and protects important public interests without unnecessarily hindering the development of the private sector—in other words, a regulatory system with strong institutions and low transactions costs.”
Continuing, it stated: “These economies all have both a well-developed private sector and a reasonably efficient regulatory system that has managed to strike a sensible balance between the protections that good rules provide and the need to have a dynamic private sector unhindered by excessively burdensome regulations.”
