The federal government is set to launch an intervention package tagged Business Champion Programme targeted at large and medium-scale businesses.This was announced by the Special Adviser to the President of the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) and Investment, Dr Jumoke Oduwole, who pointed at the programme as one of the five strategy pillars PEBEC will be working with this year.
Speaking about the programme, she noted: “Having worked with MSMEs for a few years, we realised that while systemic interventions from working on airports and seaports, we must be more targeted. The Business Champion intervention targets medium to larger-sized industries and there are two parts to that programme. The first part is to work with medium-sized enterprises and have a pilot programme of about 25 of them.”
She added that the selection of businesses will be based on factors such as their revenue, tax contributions, job creation and export proceeds. She added that the intervention will be like a bespoke service to help those companies navigate the business climate from the government side.
Still on the intervention, Oduwole highlighted that there are only 23 companies with over $1 billion in annual revenue in Nigeria and that the intervention was targeted towards these companies.
“Out of the 334 $1 billion companies in revenue in Africa, only 23 are in Nigeria,” she lamented. She noted that the decision to change models stems from the observation that larger businesses exhibit an ‘osmosis’ effect, leading to the clustering of stakeholders. She added: “It was determined that we will need to have this new approach to move faster and to grow the economy faster in these turbulent times.”
Highlighting the five strategy pillars that PEBEC was working with, they include the Business Facilitation Act of 2022, which was signed into law in February 2023. The Act is a codification of Executive Order No. 001 from 2017; Sub-national interventions, such as the World Bank’s State Action on Business Enabling Reforms (SABER) Program-for-Results. Oduwole noted that there’s a $750 million grant available for implementation by states participating in the SABER programme.
Oduwole also noted that on the legislative front, there will be a further review of the Omnibus bill, emphasising the collaborative efforts of various Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) who volunteered their expertise to review approximately 21 business laws in 2023, culminating in the formation of the 2023 Omnibus bill, adding that another round of reviews is slated for 2024 to create a new Omnibus bill.
Fourth, on the judicial front, she noted that the council will work with state judiciaries to facilitate the creation of Small Claims Courts, adding that at the start of 2023, eight states had small claims courts in Nigeria, however, by the end of the year, 25 states had implemented it and finally, the Business Champions Program.
