The Standards Organisation of Nigeria, SON, and four other government agencies have been recognised as the top five most business efficient and transparent agencies for the 2022 fiscal year.
The recognition was contained in the Federal Government’s 2022 Executive Order 001 Compliance Report released recently by the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council, PEBEC.
The other government agencies, which topped the list include, the Nigerian Content Development Monitoring Board Export-Import, NCDMB,: Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Council, FCCPC,: Nigeria Export-Import Bank, NEXIM and Corporate Affairs Commission, CAC.
The Executive Secretary of PEBEC, Jumoke Oduwole, who disclosed this said, the agencies have performed extremely well to meet consumer demands in the best and most-efficient ways to promote businesses in their bids to achieving excellent service delivery.
Acoording to Oduwole, “in the latest EO1 Compliance Report, NCDMB emerged first at 81.11per cent; SON second at 78.68 per cent”.
Oduwole, who is the Special Adviser to the President on Ease of Doing Business also noted that, “the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Council came third with 68.37 per cent, Nigerian Export-Import Bank got fourth position with 64.59 per cent while the Corporate Affairs Commission came fifth with 63.68 per cent.
She stated that the report was released in line with PEBEC’s promise to continuously track and keep the business community updated on the compliance with the order on transparency and efficiency in the Nigerian business environment.
It would be noted that the Director General of the SON, Mallam Farouk Salim has always emphasised on the need for government agencies to be business facilitators, rather than perceived as bottlenecks to business developments.
In this regard, SON commenced the digitalization of its process to fast-track ease of doing business and seamless processes, thus reducing manual skills.
Beyond this, the organisation has stepped-up its game by investing massively in laboratory testing and calibration as well as measurement processes to advance testing of Nigerian products for local consumption and export.
This gallant stride from SON, will help Nigeria participate actively in the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, AfCFTA.
Recall, on May 18, 2017, the Executive Order 001 on Transparency and Efficiency in the Business Environment was issued as the current administration’s first executive order to strengthen the implementation of business climate reforms.
Also, it was issued to deepen collaboration among ministries, departments and agencies by instituting a systemic change management process for reforms.
The order mandates MDAs to submit monthly reports to the PEBEC secretariat, the Offices of the Head of Service of the Federation, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, as well as SERVICOM.
In the last six years, PEBEC has consistently published an EO1 Compliance Report, which captures a periodic empirical analysis of the monthly reports
