LCCI will push for ease of doing business, says Mabogunje

Chikodi Ikereocha

Improving the business environment is one of the issues high on the advocacy agenda of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), its new President, Mrs. Toki Mabogunje, has said.

She said LCCI will continue to push for improvement on the ease of doing business which the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) is addressing with significant gains already recorded.

Mrs. Mabogunje, who spoke in Lagos at a cocktail to celebrate her investiture as LCCI President,  said the Council’s reforms, as well as the signing of the Executive Order on Ease of Doing Business in 2017, addressed issues around immigration and the ports, thereby improving the ease of doing business in the country.

She pointed out that the PEBEC has moved from just dealing with issues  at the national level, to others matters at the sub-national level, saying, they are now engaging with states to improve their various business environments so that there can be a better overall outcome for all of us.

“We want those improvements to continue, to push for more of those improvements around the issues which the PEBEC was dealing with,” she told The Nation at the event attended by friends, family members and business associates.

Mrs. Mabogunje, who is the third female president of  LCCI after  Mrs. Nike Akande and Mrs. Margaret Yong, succeeded the immediate past president of the Chamber, Mr. Babatunde Paul Ruwase.

Mabogunje, who is a renounced business consultant with interest in the growth and management of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), earned a degree in Law from the University of Ife. She also has a post graduate degree in International Business Law from the University of Exeter, England.

She is expected to bring her skills, training, expertise and experience garnered over the last 36 years in commercial and business enterprise from both the public and private sector perspective to bear on her new role as LCCI president.

She said under her watch, LCCI will continue to push for enabling policies and reforms that will ensure the survival and growth of SMEs in the country, saying that factors that enable for SMEs  growth, such as infrastructure, particularly power, are still to be properly addressed.

She said: “Without power and other infrastructure, industries cannot grow; it will be difficult getting products out of the country as exports or importing goods into the country,” adding that tax is something we have been addressing overtime, but more needs to be done because for SMEs, the burden of taxation is quite huge and it can stifle growth.

The LCCI boss, however, noted that Nigeria is beginning to realise that SMEs are actually the foundation for economic and development, saying “we have to grow from small to medium and medium to large. We need more of the Aliko Dangotes; we need more big industrialists.”

Mabogunje added that the closure of the land borders by the Federal Government was also high on LCCI’s agenda especially as Nigeria prepares for the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA),  saying “the border closures as well as the congestion of the ports were perhaps, the biggest low points in the economy in the out-going year. She, however, described AfCFTA as “A big opportunity for Nigeria.”