Govt should prioritise removing barriers to competitiveness – Dangote

By Yinka Kolawole

The Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, has said that the development of an efficient inter-regional payments system aimed at facilitating ease of cross-border payments is essential to the successful implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement.

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He stated this at a roundtable on industrialisation in Africa organized by the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) with the theme, “Positioning African Industries for Economic Transformation and Continental Free Trade”.

This is even as business mogul, Aliko Dangote, counselled that the best approach to achieving Ease of Doing Business is for the government to prioritise removal of barriers to competitiveness.

Osinbajo noted that foreign currencies have been mostly used for payments for intra-Africa trade which constrains the amount of trade that takes place because most African economies face foreign exchange constraints.

Osinbajo stated: “It is quite essential to develop and deepen inter-regional and continental payments systems. It is particularly important in this regard to rapidly operationalize the effort by Afreximbank to establish a Pan-African payments and settlement platform.

‘‘This will go a long way in creating the desired continental payments system and also in facilitating cross-border informal trade which is estimated to be about $93 billion per annum,” he stated.

Also speaking at the roundtable, Dangote advised AfCFTA’s managers on ways to enable rapid cross border business collaboration and competition.

Dangote stated: “It would be good to study the reasons why the previous trading blocs did not enable intra-Africa trade to exceed 15 per cent of total trade and what can be done differently. These problems don’t suddenly disappear under AfCFTA.

 “It is therefore vital for governments to continuously focus on removing barriers to competitiveness. That is the real ease of doing business, not how many days it takes to register a company.”