The Federal Government on Tuesday said that it was working on modalities that would reduce the cost and procedures of starting a business as well as make it possible for both Nigerians and foreigners to start their businesses within 48 hours.

The Minister of Trade and Investment, Mr. Olusegun Aganga, disclosed this in Abuja at the maiden edition of the Doing Business in Nigeria Workshop.

He said that government was intensifying efforts at removing the bottlenecks associated with doing business in Nigeria by harmonising taxes collected by both local and state governments in line with the Federal Government’s efforts to improve the ease of doing business in Nigeria.

He said, “We are working to improve the ease of doing business in the country. Our strategy to achieving this is by setting up implementation teams comprising the stakeholders and ensuring that these teams work on the sub indicators. We have started recording some success already.

“The Corporate Affairs Commission, an agency under my ministry, has started working on reducing the procedures, time and cost to start a business from an average of 36 days to less than five days , 77 per cent of income per capita to less than 10 per cent of income per capita and from nine processes to less than five processes in the medium term.

“Our long-term goal is to ensure that businesses can be started in this country within 48 hours. A number of state governments are also harmonising taxes and levies among themselves and the Local Governments in their domain to avoid saddling companies.”

Aganga stated that the ministry had concluded plans to set up a competitiveness council, which would be driven by the private sector to improve the competiveness of the nation’s business environment.

He said, “We are working on improving the competiveness of our nation. To achieve this, we are working with the private sector to set up a Competiveness Council which will be private sector-driven and made up of members from the public and private sectors.

Aganga added, “We are also working on enabling domestic, regional and international trade. We are in the process of re-invigorating the trade facilitation task force to improve its effectiveness.

“We believe that our actions will go a long in improving our investment climate and send the right signal to investors both at home and abroad.”

http://www.punchng.com/business/money/fg-to-reduce-cost-of-starting-business-aganga/