Nigeria Among 10 Most Improved Economies In Accessing Credit

Nigeria Among 10 Most Improved Economies In Accessing Credit

Nigeria is one of the ten economies globally that made the biggest improvement in getting credit since 2009, according to a new 2014 ‘Doing Business’ report of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the World Bank.

But the country ranked 147 among 189 economies measured in the report entitled ‘Understanding Regulations for Small and Medium-size Enterprises’ and released on Tuesday.

The country is also not listed among those governments in sub-Saharan Africa that significantly stepped up their pace of improving business regulations and encouraging smaller businesses to thrive last year.

Rather, the World Bank’s report seen by BusinessDay listed Benin, Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Togo among the 20 global economies that it found to have most improved business regulation since 2009.

The report, however, finds that since 2005, Nigeria implemented 10 business regulatory reforms, making it easier for local entrepreneurs to do business.

Interestingly, it also finds that in the year from June 2012 to June 2013, Nigeria is closer to the global good practices in business regulations than any time since 2009.

“In the past year, Nigeria has had positive developments in such areas as trading across borders, where the time to export and import has been cut thanks to continued impact this year from previously implemented reform efforts”, the report says.

It further finds that Nigeria already implements some of the global good practices in the areas of Doing Business. For example, Nigeria, it says allows a general description of collateral, which makes it easy for local entrepreneurs to get credit.

“The biggest impact was in the area of getting credit, where Nigeria improved its credit information system through a central bank guideline defining the licensing, operational and regulatory requirements for a privately owned credit bureau. Thanks to this, Nigeria is among the ten economies in the world that made the biggest improvement in gettingcredit since 2009”, the report notes.

Doing Business 2014 is the 11th in a series of annual reports investigating the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it.

It presents quantitative indicators on business regulations affecting eleven areas of the life of a business that can be compared across 189 economies in the world.

Source: Legit.ng

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