BY CHINYERE OBIORA, LAGOS – The Federal Government and the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) is set to deepen their partnership as part of efforts at growing the capital market and the nation’s economy.
Chief Executive Officer of NSE, Oscar Onyema and Minister for Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr Okechukwu Enelamah gave the hints in Lagos on Monday at the closing Gong Ceremony in commemoration of the successful completion of the reforms under National Action Plan (NAP) 4.0 at the Exchange.
NAP 4.0 ran from March 1 to April 29, 2019 with the aims of further reducing the challenges encountered by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and businesses in identifying areas of focus such as starting a business; and getting credit; paying taxes.
Others include enforcing contracts or trading within and across borders by eliminating critical bottlenecks and constraints to doing business in Nigeria.
Enelamah, who addressed stockbrokers at the NSE trading floor, said; “This partnership will make our capital market better and stronger.
“We want the partnership between the government and private sector that will be reflected on our stock exchange to support businesses.”
According to him, “We want businesses in the country to do well and this is the role of the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council, which is primarily to support businesses to prosper.”
The Minister explained that the initiative was in line with government’s commitment to deliver reforms aimed at improving the enabling environment for doing business in Nigeria through systemic interventions.
He further said “We look at this partnership as extremely important and therefore what we are doing today is not only symbolic, but significant. We hope it will lead to a better cooperation and relationship between the stocks market and the government and within the private sector and the government.”
In his remarks, the Chief Executive Officer of NSE, Oscar Onyema said a lot of progress has been made in improving ease of doing business in Nigeria, adding that Nigeria has moved from 169 position in ease of doing business ranking to about 126.
Also, Senior Special Assistant (SSA) to the President on Industry, Trade and Investment (SSA- ITI), Dr Jumoke Oduwole said the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) has been working for the past few years to make Nigeria a progressive easier place to do business.
She said; “It is a journey, though we are not there yet but we are thankfully for the support we received from the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), particularly, on the legislature aspect of the new Companies and Allied Matters Act that will be signed into law by the President very soon.”
According to her, the NAP that was launched 2016 has finished today with 63 per cent even in an election year and this is because we have been committed to working with various government ministries, agencies and state government, especially Lagos and Kano State, making sure we are working in the same direction in growing the Nigeria economy.
Also speaking at the occasion, Doyen of Capital Market, Mr Rasheed Yusuf expressed the need for collaboration between private sector, government and operators, stressing that federal government made series of promises on this in the time past but it has not materialised.
He said that Capital market was the easiest way of raising funds, insisting that sourcing funds through NSE to financing project would transform the economy.
Yusuf, who canvassed projects financing in the country through capital raising, said the federal Government must explore ways of using NSE to raise funds for projects’ execution, stressing that such development would lead to what he described as an overnight transformation of the Nigerian economy.
