The Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) has requested that the World Bank re-evaluate its indicators for the Ease of Doing Business Index to ‘properly’ reflect each country. The Director-General of LCCI, Mr Muda Yusuf made this statement during an interview on January 21, 2019.

Every year, 190 economies are ranked on the Ease of Doing Business Index by the World Bank. High ease of doing business indicates that the regulatory environment is more conducive for the starting a business while low ease of doing business means that the regulatory environment is not conducive for business. It is important to note that this ranking is based on the aggregate scores on 10 topics each consisting of certain indicators.

According to Mr Yusuf, countries were judged using the same indicators and that each country needed to be judged on specific criteria that are spectacular to their own country. He believes that each country varies in their peculiarity and challenges and hence should be judged based on the factors available in individual countries. He also mentioned that some of the indicators of the Ease of Doing Business do not properly capture the critical variables in our environment.

Using Nigeria as a focal point, the LCCI director listed some indicators peculiar to the business environment in Nigeria. Most of which are not included as indicators for the Ease of Doing Business. These include issues with power, transportation, and security which pose a major challenge for Africa’s most populous nation.

While the World Bank is well-meaning to help countries do better in creating an enabling environment for business, it would help to have general indicators while considering the varying issues of individual countries.