BY DANIEL ALEMAYEHU
Thinking of development and putting investment on a fast-track, a nation must focus on how to maximize customers’ satisfaction. Whoever wants to invest and put its fingerprint on the progress of a nation needs to get quality services from institutions especially the ones that put the economy on the wheel.
Economy of a nation must be examined and evaluated in order to make it developed and lift it up to the next level. Public and private sectors are playing the crucial part in the economy. Therefore, there has to be some preconditions to measure the progress of country’s economy. That is why the ease of doing business comes along to analyze nations’ progress in relation to arranging more favorable environment for businesses.
According to various sources, it was in 2003 when the first ease of doing business report was published by covering five indicators. It is also learnt that Netherland was the first country to apply the ease of doing business. Sources showed that the initial objective of reporting ease of business was to understand and improve the regulatory environment for businesses. The ease of doing business aims to make easier for businesses to start operating in a given country. The automation of the business registration process is one of the preconditions in ease of doing business.
It is true that economic growth has the power to bless a nation to overcome economy related challenges and creating more jobs and improves the standard of living of citizens. With all the process, the government institutions play the highest role in the creation of the environment.
In order to evaluating the achievement of the government, there are external factors that should be considered to upgrade the business environment. Documents show those legal, technological, economic, political and societal factors are the ones to measure the overall business environment of a nation.
According to recent reports, Ethiopia placed 159 from 190 countries in 2020 as New Zealand stood first and neighboring Somalia stood last. The government of Ethiopia has been working closely with multiple stakeholders to lift the nation’s rank to better level. Apart from local institutions, the government is working with international organization from the zeal to push the nation forward.
Government institutions have been working with GIZ International Services led EU- funded Business Environment and Investment Climate including E- government (BEIC) project for the exact purpose of improving the nations ease of doing business performance.
On November 08 Tuesday, GIZ International Services led EU- funded Business Environment and Investment Climate including E- government (BEIC) project stakeholders had a meeting at Hyatt Regency, Addis Ababa. Government beneficiaries along with different representatives have participated to report and evaluate the six- month performance of the project which aims at improving the quality of ease of doing business of the nation.
Having stayed with the Ethiopian Press Agency (EPA), EU funded project BEIC Team Leader, Alberto Gomez discussed about the event and the overall objectives of the project. Alberto said, “The objective of the project aims at improving the business environment of the country so that more companies can involve in creating multiple job opportunities.” The project contributes for the facilitation and improvement of business and investment environment for the benefit of the country.
Alberto further explained that the particular event is the part of the monitoring of the project which has been held every six month. “There are a number of institutions that are the part of the ‘project listening committee’ that strategically direct, judge, and monitor how the project is progressing every six month,” said the team leader. Stakeholders present what has been achieved, what to be achieved and the committee asked questions and recommended its better opinions according to the objectives of the project.
The ease of doing business, as to Alberto, is all about taking more reforms to create more business, more provisions, and more business- friendly environments. As a result, there are many institutions that have contributed to this reform. However, the project focuses on four government beneficiary institutions. These are Ministry of Innovation and Technology (MInT), the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE), Ministry of Revenue (MoR), Ministry of Trade and Regional Integration (MoTRI).
Along the lines of the government institutions, private institutions have also been included in the project such as Ethiopian Chamber of Commerce, women entrepreneurs, and European Union investors. Both sectors, public and private, are playing their own roles to creating the friendly environment of businesses.
The reason why the aforementioned government institutions are selected is that the government considered those institutions as the leading ones that carry out the reforms in the case of ease of doing business program that is signed by the Government of Ethiopia, Alberto added.
According to Alberto, in order to achieve the planned reforms in creating the ease of doing business, three objectives have been set by the project. “The first is strengthening
the capacity of the institutions by improving their IT capacity to provide digital services and improving the skills of the manpower. The second is strengthening the digital services or the E- government services to get easier and quick services including getting services in a single window. Last but not least is improving the public- private dialogue as the private sector has pivotal part to play together with the government,” Alberto explained.
Though there are a number of challenges, the world is on the move to make itself a digital world. This is a small contribution to our goals. The next move for the project is that every stakeholder carries on the implementation of the project and after six months, we will have the same performance report until we achieve our targets, Alberto stressed.
By the same token, beneficiary institutions have expressed the progress of their particular institution regarding the achievement of the project. Ministry of Innovation and Technology Digital Transformation Program Head, Abiyot Bayu (PhD) highlighted about the activity of his institution. As to Abiyot, Ethiopia got the least rank regarding the ease of doing business. In order to improve the rank, there is a task force directed by the Prime Minister. “The task force is working on forming the improvement including refining the institutional organization, rules and regulations and put digital components in the country,” Abiyot mentioned.
In this regard, As to Abiyot, Ministry of Innovation and Technology took the responsibility to work on the digital components. In this pillar, the ministry is accountable to develop the country’s E- government. The other one is finding a suitable way for the ICT departments in governmental institutions in a way that fit the essence of the ease of doing business. Besides, the ministry is working on providing professional training for ICT professionals.
Abiyot has also mentioned some of the challenges regarding the implementation of the ease of doing business. He said that institutional organization, old-fashioned rules and regulations, the use of digital technologies in government institutions, and the attitude of government service providers are some of the challenges. We need to improve those things.
“Without the technology, we do nothing. The
objective of the project is also on how we can use technology to implement the ease of doing business.” The Ministry has planned to register the nation in the first hundred countries in the list of ease of doing business, stressed Abiyot.
Likewise, Birhanu Mamo, Information and Technology Center head at the Ministry of Revenue also pinpointed that ease of doing business is all about making things easy to the customer. The ministry is working with BEIC project to enhancing the service and e- financing and e- payment.
The ministry has connected itself with seventeen local banks by a system called ‘Derash’ to let clients use e- services ande-payment and other tax related services easily. Due to the implementation of the project, over 30 thousand customers are using the digital platforms to get the ministry’s services, Birhanu noted.
The economy and Infrastructure at the European Union Delegation to Ethiopia Team Leader, Sanne Willems said, “We are supporting the government basically making things easy for making business not only establish themselves but also getting information from the government and work on digital platforms and E- government issues. The bottom line is making it easier for businesses to establish themselves and operate,” Sanne said.
Sanne further said that the total project period is five years. As ease of business and investment climate are depending on a lot of factors. This project is one little element from the whole sector. We have tried to ease certain elements to making it easier in the future.”
This EU funded project, which is implemented by GIZ International Services in partnership with McKinsey and Company targeted at supporting nation’s ease of doing business reforms.
To sum up the ideas, Ethiopia has been aggressively working to make business environment favorable to all parties. The nation has always been open for change and improvement. The government of Ethiopia has shown its commitment to work with available stakeholders for the benefit of the nation and upscale the level of the ease of doing business.
The Ethiopian Herald November 13/2022
