MAN okays govt’s economic recovery plan

The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria has commended the Federal Government for its efforts at improving the current economic situation and endorses steps being taken to pull the economy out of recession.

The association specifically lauded the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan of the government aimed at deepening the diversification and backward integration of the economy, as well as the establishment of the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council with the mandate to improve the Ease of Doing Business in the country.

MAN, who indicated this in a statement on its preliminary appraisal of the government’s 60-day national action plan for doing business in Nigeria, noted that the initiatives would lead to enhanced productivity and overall performance of the manufacturing sector.

In the statement signed by the President of MAN, Dr. Frank Jacobs, the association noted that an assessment and verification of the performance score card of the PEBEC’s 60-day national action plan revealed that 70 per cent of its seven-point objective set in line with the World Bank indices of ease of doing business had been achieved within the set timeline.

It stated in part, “The council scored above 60 per cent performance on six objectives and only one recorded a low score of 33 per cent. Overall, the performance of the council is an indicator of other developments that will come from it.

“We are hopeful that the processes and procedures required to fully actualise these objectives will be effectively implemented so as to permanently remove constraints to the EODB and improve the global ranking of Nigeria by the World Bank.”

Jacobs urged the Federal Government to sustain and consolidate all the achievements recorded within the period by removing all trade facilitation constraints and attract foreign capital inflow to the country.

MAN advised the government to ensure that other aspects of the objectives were properly implemented with a view to improving Nigeria’s competitiveness.

“On our part, we will continue to encourage our members and other investors to take advantage of these initiatives to increase their investments,” it said.

Among other suggestions, MAN urged the government to extend the initiatives to address other constraints to business such as cumbersome procedures and exorbitant administrative charges of government regulatory agencies; multiple taxes and levies across the three tiers of government that must be harmonised; need for regular stakeholders’ meeting and consultative forums between ministries, departments and agencies of government and the private sector.

The association also advised the government to deepen the existing reforms by including indices that would effectively enforce the reduction in the cost of doing business,

He said that the government should develop other easily verifiable platforms for the simplified visa on arrival and submission process, saying what was currently available was just an e-mail address, which was not sufficient for effective performance evaluation.