World Bank rating excites Presidency

The Presidency on Wednesday expressed delight at the latest World Bank’s Doing Business 2017 ranking report released on Tuesday which ranked Nigeria 169 out of 189 countries in the overall Ease of Doing Business rank.

The Presidency’s position was contained in a statement by the Senior Special Assistant to the Vice-President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Laolu Akande.

Akande said the ranking showed that the various reform initiatives put in place by the present administration towards instituting a positive business environment are yielding dividends.

He described the report as an indication that the focus of President Muhammadu Buhari to reposition the nation’s business and economic environment is working and on course.

He added that while Nigeria’s position remains the same as last year on the index ranking, it is encouraging that the country has recorded some positive outlooks in critical areas of the ranking which included Starting a Business, Dealing with Construction Permits, Registering Property and Access to Credit.

“The objectivity and reliability of this report coming from an international development institution lends weight to the milestone recorded in particular on the distance to frontier (DTF) metric, where the country’s score improved slightly from 44.02 in Doing Business 2016 to 44.63 in Doing Business 2017,” he said.

Akande said the President was committed to scaling up his administration’s reform activities in order to continue to arrest the past decline where the country fell from 94 in 2006 to 169 in 2016.

“With the reform efforts being put in place now, indications are that in subsequent years Nigeria will scale up significantly in the ranking,” he concluded.

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