Nigeria to harmonise taxes and levies

Olusegun Aganga
The Nigerian Minister for Trade and Investment

Nigeria to harmonise taxes and levies
Hauwa Noroh Ali, Abuja

Nigeria is to harmonise all taxes and levies between business owners, Local, State and Federal Government to avoid saddling companies with excessive tax burden of multiple taxation.

Government says it is working assiduously to put in place measures and policies that will ensure starting any kind of business within forty eight hours in Nigeria.

The Nigerian Minister for Trade and Investment, Mr Olusegun Aganga, at a workshop on “Doing Business in Nigeria in 2012” in Abuja on Tuesday, said the government would  institute measures and policies that would make it possible to start any business in Nigeria within forty eight hours.

He said: “It might interest you to know that this is the first time in the history of our nation that we are actually taking steps in a planned and coordinated manner, involving Ministries Departments and Agencies at both Federal and State level and with the support from our development partners to improve our business environment.”

Strategies and investment policies

The minister stated that some of the quick wins that the ministry will adopt in collaboration with the World Bank and DFID include right investment policies that would cut across board, easy business registration and setting up of committees that would work with the industries to help them sort out their challenges when needed.

“We are working to improve the ease of doing business in the country. Our implementation teams comprising the stakeholders  set up to work on the Sub-indicators of the Corporate Affairs Commission, has started working on reducing the procedures; time and cost to start a business from an average of 36 days to less than 5 days, 77.7 per cent of income per capita to less than 10 per cent of income per capita and from 9 processes to less than 5 processes.“ He said

Aganga stated that the government was working on improving the competitiveness of the country by working with the private sector to set up a Competitiveness Council which would be private sector driven and made up of members from the public and private sector.

He promised that once the Council was set up the Ministry of Trade and Investment, the Competitiveness Council with support from development partners will again set up implementation teams to ensure that the recommendations by the Council were fully implemented.

Doing Business 2012 

The Doing Business workshop is a joint effort by World Bank, DFID and IFC to measure the ease of doing business. Doing Business 2012 is a report which measures how business is done in a more transparent world , assesses regulations affecting domestic firms in 183 economies and ranks the economies in 10 areas of business regulation, such as starting a business, resolving insolvency and trading across borders.

This year’s report data covered regulations measured from June 2010 through May 2011. The report rankings on ease of doing business have expanded to include indicators on getting electricity.

Doing Business explains how easy or difficult it is for a local entrepreneur to open and run a small to medium-size business when complying with relevant regulations. It measures and tracks changes in regulations affecting 10 areas in the life cycle of a business: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency.

In a series of annual reports Doing Business presents quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 183 economies, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, over time.

The data set covers 46 economies in Sub-Saharan Africa, 32 in Latin America and the Caribbean, 24 in East Asia and the Pacific, 24 in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, 18 in the Middle East and North Africa and 8 in South Asia, as well as 31 OECD high-income economies.

The indicators are used to analyze economic outcomes and identify what reforms have worked, where and why.

Improving Nigeria’s ranking

Nigeria ranks 133 in Doing Business 2012.

The Country Director of the UK DFID, Richard Montegomery, expressed sadness that Nigeria's Doing business Rating was still static and sleeping at 133 out of 183. He pointed out that the effective policies being put in place by the Nigerian Government through the Transformational Agenda would improve the ranking to 72.

According to Nigeria’s Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi okonjo-iweala, Nigeria’s growth rate has been static with a record growth of nothing more than seven per cent in the past three years due to over dependency of the country on oil.

She stressed the need to diversify the economy by investing in the real sector, SMEs and ensuring that there is an enabling environment for the private sector to invest  
“There is a great need to diversify and create jobs. Where does this come from? The real sector, the private sector and the SME. With the reforms coming from the Transformation Agenda, Nigeria will only be doing business according to International Best Practice as this would improve regulations and enhance Nigeria’s ranking.

Williams/Cokey