For an administration trying to stage a comeback this week’s presidential election, any promises made and kept before election day will definitely not go uncelebrated. It is therefore not out of place for officials of government and other stakeholders to have focused on the launch of the company registration portal by the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) for most part of last week.
Ease of Doing Business
For the records, one of the issues raised by the World Bank and other multilateral institutions on Nigeria is the high cost of doing business in the country. This reflected in the latest ranking on ease of doing business in countries around the world by the World Bank. Nigeria was 170th among 189 countries in terms of the ease of doing business. The annual World Bank Group Doing Business report analyses regulations that apply to an economy’s businesses during their life cycle, including start-up and operations, trading across borders, paying taxes, and resolving insolvency.
However, economic affairs commentators say the take-off of the company registration portal of the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), which was commissioned last week by the Minister of Trade, Industry and Investment, Dr. Olusegun Aganga, will significantly bring down cost of doing business in Nigeria and that it won’t be a surprise to see Nigeria improving significantly on the next edition of the Ease of Doing Business ranking.
Addressing Constraints to Business Registration
The prospect of the anticipated improvement in ease of doing business which was raised by the minister at the launch was shared by the Chairman of the board of CAC, Otunba Funsho Lawal, and the Registrar General, Alhaji Bello Mahmud.
Aganga believed the online portal will fundamentally reform company registration in Nigeria; a development which he said will provide key evidence of this administration’s commitment to improving investment climate in Nigeria.
The minister said: “The platform we are launching today is the single biggest reform in company’s registration within Nigeria in decades.
“The CAC company registration portal will position CAC as one of the biggest registration bodies in the world and will address a key constraint to starting and operating businesses in Nigeria. We will be introducing transparency and accountability because it will be easier to find out about companies and their directors.”
He noted that “it has been many months since this government envisioned the development of companies’ registration portal and finally we have achieved our objective today.”
Commending the efforts of the Minister of Communications Technology for providing the leadership, Aganga said the launch wouldn’t have been possible without the technical and financial commitment of the ministry. “This has been a true partnership. I also want to appreciate the role played by DFID and World Bank.”
Explaining the process that culminated in the adoption of the new company registration portal, Aganga said: “Upon assumption of office in 2011, I realised that the commission was just trying to upgrade its software to allow for on-line registration and payment. That coincided with the collaboration with the DFID on Investment Climate Reform.
“Consequently, the commission’s vendor (DTI) was invited to accomplish the task as quickly as possible. The initiative experienced delays which necessitated the invitation to the ministry of communications technology with clear implementation time lines.
“Following the inability of the former vendor to deliver on the upgrade, the ministry of communications technology included the commission into phase two of type government service portal (GSP) and Messrs Oasis Management Co. Limited; vendors to the GSP were engaged to develop the application. I am elated that today; these efforts have culminated into a new CAC online registration platform for which I have the singular honour to get underway.
Speaking on the qualities of the software being deployed, the minister said that the new software is robust enough to accommodate all e-payment platforms such as Interswitch, etransact, Visa card, Master card, verve card, American Express and other forms of electronic payment, adding that the software will enable customers to file their documents online without having to physically visit the Commission. The effort, he said, will significantly reduce the cost of doing business in the country.
On his part, the chairman of the board of CAC described the company registration portal as a climax of the activities of the board in meeting the quest of President Goodluck Jonathan to significantly reduce cost of doing business in the country.
An Exciting Moment
The chairman of the board of CAC, Otunba Funsho Lawal, in an interview with THISDAY described the commissioning of the online platform as an exciting moment for the board of CAC.
“When we came on board about two years ago, we met a system that was inadequate, a system not efficient and a system that had more or less outlived its usefulness. We worked with the former contractor to upgrade the system but it was almost impossible to do so. Then we were compelled to make sure we procure more reliable system.
“We are happy this is happening during our tenure and we believe the operation of CAC will be seamless because we expect improvement in the software and maintenance and after this, CAC can then be on auto pilot,” Otunba Lawal said.
On the complaint of frequent breakdown of system in the past, the chairman said, this is a completely different arrangement altogether, explaining that “It is an upgraded version of the old system. This is a completely new system and we hope it will work without any problem for the next six to seven years. With this arrangement, we will be able to serve our customers better.”
Better Service Quality
The overall benefit of the new development, according to him, is the anticipated improvement in service quality. He said, “The level of service will be greatly improved. As demonstrated by the Minister of Trade, Industry and Investment, we were able to register a company within 15 minutes as against three to two days in the past. This process will reduce cost because we are trying to reduce business costs in Nigeria.”
He said, “The first initiative we put in place as soon as we assumed duty was to overhaul the website of CAC. Gone are the days when you used to see old addresses and old telephone numbers of companies. When we came in, we decided to log in into CAC website and we discovered that some of the information there were more than 10 years old. So the best thing to do was to overhaul the website.”
In order to make the services of the commission acceptable in all parts of the country, Lawal said the board decided to take its meetings out of Abuja.” The next thing we did was to start moving our board meetings to different regions of the country. There was a stakeholders’ forum in each of the regions we go. We have been to North Central zone and North West. Very soon we will be in South south zone. We do this in order to listen to our customers’ needs,” he said.
According to the Registrar –general, the commissioning of the online portal of the commission will make things easy for potential subscribers of the commission’s service, adding that CAC has effectively got over the embarrassment caused by the activities of former vendor who tried to sabotage the commission’s plan. He said as far as automated company registration process is concerned, CAC has delivered on its promise.
Inter-ministerial Partnership
Explaining the role played by her ministry, Minister for Communications Technology, Mrs Omobola Johnson, said the support given to CAC was driven by the need to increase the adoption of ICTs in government to achieve greater transparency, efficiency and productivity in governance and citizen engagement.
The actualisation of this mandate is through our ‘Getting Government Online’ initiative which has the primary objective of leveraging ICTs to enhance the effectiveness of service delivery for the benefits of its citizens. Our Getting Government Online initiative is designed with a “whole of government approach” in mind - that is, every project is designed and implemented in a scalable manner to facilitate utilisation by various Federal Government MDAs. In other words we are deploying high quality, technologically advanced and secure e-government infrastructure that can be shared by all government agencies.”
She described the Company Registration Portal as “another testament to this “whole of government approach that we are taking. In 2013 we developed and launched a Government Service Portal infrastructure (services.gov.ng) through which we would re-engineer citizen centred government processes, digitise them and then offer to citizens via the internet. We have spent considerable resources (time and effort) to document and digitise various services across several MDAs, while also providing links to other pre-existing applications and services on other MDA websites.”
E-government Platform
Giving an insight into the collaboration between her ministry and that of trade, industry and investment, Johnson said the need for more high traffic processes to really increase the utilisation of the e-government platform made her to enlist the support of her colleague in the trade, industry and investment ministry, the Registrar and management team of the Corporate Affairs Commission to onboard some company registration services onto the services portal.
“While our initial intent was to implement a few processes that would improve citizens’ interaction with the CAC, once the work started, we realised that due to various interdependencies, we had to increase the scope of the work to include a total revamp of the whole CAC system - including several pre and post incorporation processes.
“The project was also expanded to include the provision of a Universal Payment Gateway to enable users of the portal, use multiple channels and platforms to, and make payment for government services from the comfort of their homes and/or offices. While this will make it easier for users to get CAC services, we also expect that it will result in revenue assurance, by plugging leakages.”
The minister said that in line with the nation’s local content in ICT initiative which is seeking to increase the participation of Nigerian companies in the ICT sector, the Government Services Portal including the CAC aspect has been designed and developed by an outstanding team of wholly Nigerian software developers and engineers at Oasis Seamfix that have met the international benchmarks and best practices stipulated by the DFID sponsored consultant.
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Quelle/Source: THISDAY Live, 08.02.2015
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