…Poor infrastructure, corruption biggest constraints to doing business in Nigeria
Oscarline Onwuemenyi
14 July 2016, Sweetcrude, Abuja – The World Bank has announced that Nigeria recorded slight improvement in Global Competitiveness Index ranking, GCI, from 127 to 124.
The report also attributed 16th position of the bottom 20 economies in the Global Competitiveness Index, GCI, to sub-Saharan African.
The World Bank Group Governance Specialist and co-author, African Competitive report, Mr Barak Hoffman, made this known at the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) and World Bank workshop on Economic competitiveness in the country.
According to the report, “Nigeria, as at 2005, was ranked 94; but further dropped to 124 out of the 140 countries in the Global Competitiveness Index, GCI, in 2015/2016, between Gambia and Zimbabwe.
“The country rose from 127 in 2014/ 2015, as Mauritius remains the region’s most competitive economy rated 46, while Côte d’Ivoire at 91 is the most improved country in Sub-Saharan Africa, followed by Ethiopia ranked 109.”
He listed institutions, policies, and factors of production to determine the level of productivity of a country.
He explained that Nigeria performed well on market size, macroeconomic environment, and labour market efficiency, but had challenges in health, primary education, higher education, training and infrastructure.
He said, “Poor infrastructure, corruption and access to financing are the most problematic factors for doing business in Nigeria. Tax rates and complexity, and crime are not very problematic, by contrast.”
