The Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council and the Lagos State Government have reaffirmed their commitments to fostering a conducive environment for businesses in Lagos and Nigeria to grow and thrive.
A Tuesday statement noted that the commitments were expressed at the State Action on Business Enabling Reforms Technical Session and statewide town hall meeting organised by PEBEC in Lagos, at the Combo Hall, Agidingbi, Ikeja.
Speaking at the event, the Lagos State Commissioner for Commerce, Cooperatives, Trade and Investment, Folashade Bada-Ambrose, described Lagos as a state that understood the need to institutionalise reforms and recognised that prosperity could not be built on potential alone.
“Reforms must be constructed upon policy clarity, infrastructure readiness, regulatory transparency, and above all, unwavering public-private cooperation.
“SABER, spearheaded by PEBEC in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Finance, the Debt Management Office, and the World Bank, offers a strategic framework to standardise and localise ease of doing business reforms across all subnational governments because reform must be context-sensitive.
“It must reach the woman selling textiles in Balogun, the baker in Ikorodu navigating multiple levies, the startup founder in Yaba building blockchain-based health solutions, the farmer in Epe exporting processed palm oil, and the young cooperative society in Ijede seeking access to capital,” she said.
The Director General, PEBEC, Zahrah Audu, said the goal of PEBEC is to work with the states and ensure all hands are on deck to support the administration of President Bola Tinubu to foster a conducive business environment that drives more innovation and growth.
“The overriding goal is trade facilitation and the Federal Government is doing a lot like reducing customs inspection of goods to one day and addressing multiple taxation, levies, and fees, among others.
“At the federal level, PEBEC is pushing for synergy and sharing of reports among agencies to avoid multiplicity of inspection, and I believe that this session will lay all the issues bare and speak to challenges as they concern the operating environment in Lagos State,” Audu said.
