Nigeria's New Law Revolutionizes Business Landscape for Small Enterprises

 Nigeria's President Mohammed Buari has signed the business fast-settation bill into law. The new law, known as the Omnus Bill, is expected to strengthen ease of doing business reforms across country. Jummaqeo Duwale, Special Advisor to the President on ease of doing business and the Secretary of the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council, joins us now to discuss the impact of this new law. Jummaqeo Duwale is a pleasure to have you on the program and I must say congratulations because I'm sure this has been long coming, a lot of hard work over the years. And of course, it's a good place to start to really appreciate the consequence of this new law. I understand that it sort of brings together several laws and updates them. Can you just tell us what exactly is changing with the enactment of this law? Thank you, Bolly. Yes, I would congratulate you to the entire business community in Nigeria. So an Omnus Bill is legislative to reform, to amend a number of registrations at the same time. So it's known that it has a tool to just clean up rapidly. Now, this is my first business consultation bill with this bill where amending a small act is going to be tested any day from now. We're making 21 laws. And those 21 laws range from the Comprehensive and I Practice Act, the Customs and Excess Act, Export Promotion Act, foreign reporting control act. A number of registrations is based on over four years of work with public and private sector stakeholders in large selection from the Nigerian's bi-assessition section of business law to the National Economic Summit Group, to the National Assembly Business Roundtable on the private sector and on the government side, we have, of course, the Ministry of Justice. And the Public Secretary has engaged with several stakeholders that bring a number of registrations before we distilled through a little more tests at the food-bite of public past the presidential and Indian Business and National Council. One very important thing to note about this act is that it qualifies executive order zero to one. Executive order zero to one is the first executive order of this administration was signed in 2017. And it gives a number of interventions as an executive order, given a number of interventions that were going to be catalytic for transparency and efficiency of public service delivery, the way the public service and the civil and public service relate with all stakeholders really, particularly the business community from the transparency involved in listing regulations, listing the cost listing procedures, to things as for the mental, as legislated reviews of a civil, we will provide the Nigerian customs service. It's great to hear that we are seeing many laws updated at the same time, but I also have been told that this law promises a lot for small businesses. So perhaps you can dwell on that a little bit. What's the implication of this law for small businesses? So everything about the law is actually curated specifically for small businesses. So I wish I could go into the granularity of the 21 legislations that were amended on the floor, but it goes to things as basic as before we had only certificates in paper form for company cooperation. Now legally recognized electronic certificates, things like the amount of time and cost of doing certain things in business. So each of the legislations, each of the amendments speak specifically to a painting point that had been highlighted by the private sector, specifically targeted at easy, smaller, medium-sized enterprise, the regulatory and bureaucratic challenges. So we actually took the proposal, so we took the proposal from a wide range of stakeholders including university academics, private sector, just all across the court, larger corporate, smaller corporate things that were passed on to the PIP, things that were passed on to the Finance Act, the things that we amended using this homeless bill, using this business facilitation, miscellaneous act, and things that went through a litmus test that spoke to the mandate of the paper. Now the mandate of the paper is directed at small, micro-small and medium-sized enterprises, making it more less bureaucratic for them to do business. So we focused on transparency and efficiency of public service delivery, that interface. So you have a number of things like, for instance, with immigration service, there was some bottlenecks when you have to escalate all the way to the minister, and now we made the search that the controller general can sign off at his or her own desk, and that's that. Things that really quickly, the process time, the processes, the people interface and transparency to reduce the cost and the time of doing business in Nigeria. So they're concrete interventions when you have the opportunity to look at the act itself, it literally goes blind by line. Maybe an intervention took a month and it's now been reduced to 15 days. So it's quite bright. To give that facilitation for the small, or medium-sized enterprises. It's great to hear all of that, and you did mention pain points for many of these businesses. One of them I imagine is credit. I just want to hear, I'm not speaking specifically to credit right now, but if you can just speak to the ecosystem that you think enactment of this law could enable in terms of how we can have an ecosystem that is more supportive of small businesses. Can you speak to that point? So what we've continued to push at our end for the credit ecosystem in Nigeria is the legislative structure that enables financial interventions to lend with the confidence to the MSME sector. There's a lot of informality in that space. You know that the MSME sector contributes just over 45% to my Treasury GDP. And really almost 90% of jobs in Nigeria are generated by that demographic. So we have a particular focus on them with credit. This would be our fourth legislation that impacts on the ability to generate credit. The first one was the credit reporting bill in 2017. We worked with the eighth national assembly on that to make sure that our credit bureaus had a legislative framework to be able to do what they do. We have about three private private credit bureaus in Nigeria. Partner with them are with the ecosystem of the MSMEs. What do they need to be able to give those credit histories to Nigerian powers for the access of Nigerian landers? The second one was even a legal framework to the central bank of Nigeria's movable properties, collateral registry. So there had been a lot of pain points with Nigerian business owners who didn't have land-led property. But they have stock, they have movable property. So we gave a legal intervention again in 2017 with the international assembly, a legal framework for the movable properties. So that banks know that wherever the property is in Nigeria, we've come up with being registered on that property. These provisions in Nigeria are six positions in getting credit, legislative and regulatory environment, six in the world that year, under the World Bank ranking. We continue to track how that translates into accessing credit and working with the banks and financial institutions to make sure that they have the courage to land to this demographic. With this particular legislation, the ease with which they're able to then function and do their work and make them all credit worthy, and then the financial institutions will be better placed to be able to service them in terms of access to credit. Right. I've got to ask you this because as you know as this administration winds down, the concern very often is the lack of an institutionalization of reforms. And the big question is, what happens to some of the initiatives that Pepec has been championing over the last couple of years? Can you just speak to how strong you would say that is that, should I say, will and structure to make sure that we follow through with the reforms that are ongoing? Yes, the sustainability is a very big issue for this administration, especially the Pepec and the business intervention. At the end of the first term, it became apparent that there would be a key man with the intervention or still to its infancy stage and had enough roots in the public and civil service. So right now, the Pepec Secretary has stopped technically that at least 50% of public and civil service and 50% of the resources from the private sector. We worked very closely with the head of civil service on this intervention. This act in particular, by qualifying executive order work, I mean, I should speak a bit more of what executive order one is. So executive order one is efficiency, promoting efficiency and transparency and public service to be to the business climate. What it does is it makes sure that agencies, ministries, departments, and agencies that interface with the private sector are encouraged. That's what the executive order did and now is made into by law, which is a big jump for sustainability. So the key features of that executive order were first of all to ensure that there's single interface at the airport and at the seaport so that businesses and travelers are not going from pillar to post. The way in which the documentation is presented to the public service, one chain, one line of reporting, not going again from office to office duplicating the same documentation. There's an important provision as which to default or pull-offs that's also now been legislated upon. They have fundamental provisions like the requirement for single-way group. You know, Nigeria is a trading nation. That's a very important aspect of this act and that's now been legislated upon. So for sustainability, these are things that have been tricky and challenging as executives, as the executive and the government, trying to have this transformative agenda that will obstacle, that will be around and around with a law in place. Thanks to the collaboration of a broad section of the public and private sector stakeholders and the national assembly, this now has been backing. So it's a goal. That's what's really fundamental about this in terms of sustainability. It's no longer just pushing a reform that can be lapsed through COVID, so that is now a law for posterity. Well, certainly one of the big takeaways from this is it is indeed, as you mentioned, the results of the public and private sector stakeholders collaborating to make it happen. I think that is one big takeaway from this process. Welcome, additions again to Pebek. I've been speaking to Jim O'Kale, the special adviser to the president on ease of doing business and the secretary of the presidential enabling business environment council.

Nigeria's President, Muhammadu Buhari has signed the business facilitation bill 2022 into law. The new law known as the Omnibus bill is expected to strengthen ease of doing business reforms across the country. Jumoke Oduwole, special adviser to the president on ease of doing business and secretary of the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council joins CNBC Africa to discuss the impact of the new law.

Nigeria's new law tackles bottlenecks in doing business

Nigeria's President, Muhammadu Buhari has signed the business facilitation bill 2022 into law. The new law known as the Omnibus bill is expected to strengthen ease of doing business reforms across the country. 

Nigeria's new law tackles bottlenecks in doing business

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Nigeria's new law tackles bottlenecks in doing business

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