DAWN Commission and DFID/PERL on Tuesday, 7th May, 2019 held a strategic meeting with representatives of the State Governments in the Region on how to effectively improve the Business environment in Southwest Nigeria. In attendance also were members of the organised private sector, Chambers of Commerce and Federation of informal workers of Nigeria, amongst others.

The meeting, held in Osogbo, was in line with previous conversations on the Ease-of-Doing Business in Southwest Nigeria with a major focus on making the business environment most conducive. Avenues to permanently remove bottlenecks for MSMEs were discussed as well as ways to improve States’ ranking on the World Bank sub-national Ease of Doing Business indicators

Objectives of the meeting;

• To enable the states present concrete actions taken to implement action plans developed to address constraints affecting the business environment in their states.

• To provide a platform to share lessons on investment facilitation and attraction, setting up an effective investment promotion agency and catalogue best practices that can be replicated in different states.

• To enable states to engage with relevant stakeholders from the private and public sectors to address constraints affecting the ease of doing business with the Region.

• To obtain the commitment of states to further actions to improve the business environment and agree on monitoring and feedback mechanisms including results.

The outcome of this stakeholder’s engagement, particularly the Action plans/Next steps developed by various states with set timelines, will go a long way in improving the business environment in the Region.

DAWN Commission and DFID-PERL are confident that in no distant time the Southwest States will be among the Top 10 States in the Country in terms of Ease-of-Doing Business thereby improving our ranking on the World Bank Indicator.