Business operation: Ondo ‘ll rank among best – Commissioner

By Josephine Oguntoyinbo and Babatunde Olorunleke
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Ondo State Government has reiterated  its  commitment to make the state  rank  among  the best in terms of business operations.

Commissioner for Regional Integration and Special Duties, Prof. Bayonile Ademodi declared  this  at a one day Inter-Agency policy Review Meeting on Ease of Doing Business (EODB)  in the  South/West region of Nigeria organised by the Ministry in collaboration with the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN) Commission and Department For International Development -Partnership to Engage, Reform and Learn (DFID-PERL).

Ademodi said that it is imperative for the ministry to convene the meeting /consultation to identify the social and policy bottlenecks that impede business growth in the state and brainstorm in order to proffer innovative solutions to them.

Represented by the Acting Permanent Secretary in the ministry, Engr. Ebenezer Ogunsanmi, the Commissioner noted that the DAWN commission recently carried out the ease of doing business assessment study in collaboration with DFID-PERL and the findings confirmed that the state and some other states in the South/West are lagging behind in the basic indicators of economic and business competitiveness.

To this end, the Commissioner averred that the state as a key participant in the region’s process need to brainstorm on the way forward in order to move from the present position to the first ten in the EoDB ranking.

The representative of DAWN commission, Mr Gbenga Wahab during his presentation explained that the objective of the commission is to engender regional cooperation and integration as a catalyst for development and facilitate sustainable working relationship in the South/West region of Nigeria to become a preferred place for people to visit, live, work and invest.

He identified bottleneck in the southwest region to include, lack of data for planning and decision making, lack of access to credit for MSMEs, lack of private sector involvement in government planning, budgeting and decision making and lack of enabling environment for MSMEs among others.

He stressed the need for all states in the region to work in collaboration to tackle the challenges of growing the private sector  to attract fresh investment, go beyond the largest business city, capture local differences, provide replicable good practices and  improve infrastructure across the region among others.

Wahab maintained that this will facilitate states competitiveness, ensure best practices, improve living standard among others.

The DAWN representative however affirmed that virtually all the states in the region are doing something positive in reforms implementation adding that the region’s strategic EODB vision by 2020 is to ensure  a South/West region with a business environment that is economically vibrant, accessible, inclusive and highly attractive for local and foreign investors.