Have you noticed that some of the agencies in the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment (MITI) are improving their turnaround times. You can incorporate a company now with the Corporate Affairs Commission within two weeks, if you get all the rules right on first attempt. For example, do not have engineering in the name of your company if you do not belong to COREN (Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria).
Also, now one can search for a company without going to Abuja through the CAC pubic search. Though it does not give much information, it provides the first line of ascertaining the credibility of potential partners.
It seems Microsoft is behind these transformations. According to government press release, MITI is partnering with Microsoft, through its Africa Open4Business programme, to digitally transform the delivery of services to the investor community in Nigeria and evolve the regulatory and procedural environment governing business incorporation. By harnessing advances in cloud technologies, MITI aims to transform the reach and scope of government-to-investor services in the country, creating an agile and investment-friendly environment.
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MITI strongly believes that digital technologies play a pivotal and fundamental role in evaluating and changing the landscape for reforms, with e-reforms becoming the next big thing for Nigeria, for government operations and services, and for the economy at large.
“Our partnership with Microsoft is designed to drive business model innovations, which will transform the delivery of services to current and prospective investors in Nigeria,” says the Honorable Okechukwu Enelamah, Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment. “The objective is to deliver self-provisioned, expedient and technology-driven services to the highly-valued constituencies of investors that we are mandated and keen to serve”.
Nigerians welcome the redesign we are seeing in this Ministry. The Ministry of Education is also showing a lot of innovation despite the paltry budget it has. In Agriculture, the federal ministry is also pushing hard to remove pricing asymmetry through technology. It must execute that project as that will benefit our rural farmers. Technology can help simplify most of our processes.
Well done the two ministers running the Ministry. Your predecessor, Olusegun Aganga, did well also.
