Nigeria ranked among countries with agribusiness friendly regulations- report

Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) in partnership with the World Bank Group has ranked Nigeria among countries with more agribusiness friendly regulations in its “Enabling The Business of Agriculture 2017” assessment report.

It also it rated Nigeria high especially in the area of regulatory frameworks for finance, fertilizers, machinery in agribusiness. Farbod Youssefi, the program manager of World Bank Group, unveiled the report during a workshop for the Enabling Business of Agriculture Report for Nigeria, organized by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) in Abuja.

However, Youssefi noted that Nigeria has slacked off in the area of seeds, markets, transport, water and ICT while livestock sector, facilities and operational capacity were not considered.

He said, “Well, it’s not mine to say what the government should do or not to do but what I can do is to share the evidence of this report, which is basically the tool which compares the regulations in Nigeria; the laws and regulations for agribusiness with some other countries. “When you do the comparison, you find that there are some areas where Nigeria has weaker laws and regulations than other countries. Those areas are seeds, markets, transport, and ICT. “Now, there are other areas such as finance, fertilizers, machinery where the scores in Nigeria are actually higher than other countries. Still, there are some areas where improvement can be made. “The evidence really highlights those opportunities to improve the regulatory framework for agribusiness here in Nigeria.”

Kehinde Makinde, the county director, said for business to flourish, it needs conducive environment.

“So what this report does is to go through different countries to examine regulations in different sectors like seeds, fertilizer, machinery. We are tracking this to be able to show how countries are faring against the benchmark in other countries. There are 62 countries under consideration in this report. And we’ve been able to see how Nigeria is faring in respect to other countries on regulations, reforms.”So the essence of the report is to provide information that policy actors like the private sector, legislators, executive, to see what level Nigeria is and what needs to be done to improve.

He, however, said the quality of the data gotten for the report depend on the quality of data gathered from those that gave the information. And that the report talked about the situation in the country and not about a particular state.

In the same vein, Waziri Ahmadu, the Adamawa State Commissioner for Agriculture, said that the country has good frameworks but lacks the political will to implement them.

“What happens in Nigeria really is not legal and regulatory issues that are the problem. In most cases, we have very good frameworks but when it comes to implementation, it’s a completely different kettle of fish,” he said.

He urged FG to increase the already available 30, 000 functional tractors to 300,000 to 400,000 tractors in the country because of the current population. “I just take the example of machinery; we are only about 16 out of the 62 countries that have been assessed, which means that we should be doing very well but unfortunately, the reality is that in Nigeria, the tractor density is so low; it’s like one tractor to 3,000 hectares of land.

Audu Ogbeh, the minister of agriculture and rural development, who was represented by Ukata Benard, a deputy director in the ministry,  said the report will be of great relevance to Nigeria economy, stakeholders, developmental partners, private sector, civil society, and farmers, adding that in 2013, the analysis of data on laws and regulations collected by EBA yielded important result.