The Federal Government has set up two committees that will improve the flow of trade and investment to the country. They are: ‘Doing Business and Competitiveness’ and ‘Investor Care’ committees. Speaking while inaugurating the committees, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Dr Anyim Pius Anyim, said there was the need to resuscitate certain committees to improve Nigeria’s trade ranking in the world.

Anyim was speaking against the backdrop of the recent ranking of Nigeria as the 127th in terms of global competitiveness as released by the 2011 World Economic Forum (WEF).

“The need for resuscitation of these committees became more glaring after due consideration of the recent released 2011 Global Competiveness Index (GCI) of the World Economic Forum (WEF) that ranked Nigeria as 127th country out of 139 countries.

It was also noted that Nigeria ranked poorly in all the twelve indicators known as pillars of competitiveness except with respect to its market size and business sophistication.’’

According to Ayim, Nigeria was also ranked 137th out of the 183 countries analysed in the 2011 Doing Business Report of the world and 93rd out of 241 countries in the World Investment Report of 2010 by the UN commission.

He said the mandate of the two committees as contained in their Terms of Reference, was to monitor the legislation governing the art of doing business in Nigeria. He stressed that the committee on competitiveness and investor care would, among the others things, receive and appraise complaints on investment/business environment from investors.