By Uche Mbah
The current favorable disposition towards Nigeria is once again reflected in their ranking on the ease of doing business released Thursday by the World Bank. In a released ranking, Nigeria is now ranked 131 out of 190 countries. They were previously ranked 116, hence the country has moved 15 places in ranking rung.
Only recently, the World body approved a loan of $3 billion for the power sector in Nigeria, which may apparently indicate increase in confidence on Nigeria.
“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”, the Bank said, adding that 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.
“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” , the Bank said.
It takes far more than 96 hours to process import papers at the Nigerian Dockyards. Investigations show it takes weeks in some cases, and importers pay demurrage on the delay caused by bureaucracy.
The import process in Nigerian coastal waters is so high that most importers prefer to use the Cotonou seaport, which is smaller and cheaper. They then import the products from there into Nigeria. This has made Benin republic the country with the highest importation of cars-the annual import of cars far exceed the small country’s population.
The closure of Nigeria’s borders have been cautiously hailed by the International Monetary Fund, IMF.
The Brenton wood organization , according to experts, responds to the whims of the world powers, including the United states. Analysts posit that Nigeria should expect more favorable deals from the West and America, judging from the current resurgence of cold war between the United states and Russia. China is also expected to soften their terms as a counterpoise to the wooing of Africans by the Russia.
African countries are now meeting in Russia with president Putin. Nigeria’s president Buhari is said to be negotiating train contracts as well as resuscitating the Ajeokuta steel complex-a contract the Russians were initially involved in, and which the engineering documentations were written only in Russian language to prevent technology transfer. This, according to analysts, accounts for why the contract died after the Russians left.
