Ease of doing business: FG to launch $750m World Bank-backed programme

Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo says state governments and their agencies have significant roles in ensuring an enabling environment for businesses to thrive.

Osinbajo stated this on Tuesday in his remarks at a virtual meeting of the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC).

The SABER programme is a 3-year (Jan 2023 – Dec 2025) performance-based intervention jointly designed by the World Bank and the PEBEC secretariat with support from the federal ministry of finance, budget and national planning and the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF).

The initiative is to incentivise and strengthen the implementation of business enabling reforms in Nigeria, specifically across the participating states of the federation and the FCT.

“If we are going to have the kind of business environment that our country deserves and that can make a difference for our economy, it is the hard work at the sub-national level that would really move the needle,” Osinbajo said.

“The states’ process is very important, and I hope that we will be able to spend individually, especially in the states, a fair amount of time trying to work out how this will work in actual practice in our various states.”

In her remarks, Jumoke Oduwole, secretary, PEBEC, said the conceptualisation of the SABER programme took two years.

“We have been collaborating for over two years in conceptualising the SABER Program. It is the first programme of this size that the World Bank is embarking on at this scale globally,” she said.

“The program is a $750million operation comprising two main areas — $730million program-for-Results Financing (PforR) component and $20 million technical assistance for investment project financing.”

PEBEC was set up in July 2016 by President Muhammadu Buhari to remove bureaucratic constraints of doing business in Nigeria.