Vice President Kashim Shettima has ordered the Director-General of the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council to initiate moves toward a one-year extension of the 750 million dollar World Bank-assisted State Action on Business Enabling Reforms program, warning that states were not moving fast enough to capture the full benefits of the initiative before its scheduled close.

Speaking at a stakeholder meeting on optimizing SABER implementation at the State House in Abuja, Shettima said a fully delivered SABER program would help create a more predictable and transparent business environment across the federation, attract domestic and foreign investment, strengthen private-sector confidence, reduce the cost of doing business, expand digital and physical infrastructure, improve access to land and commercial justice systems, and enhance the competitiveness of the states.

He said the success of the Tinubu administration’s broader economic reform agenda depended significantly on the ability to create enabling conditions for businesses to invest, expand, and create jobs, and that many of the factors defining the investor experience were determined at the subnational level. He said Nigeria stood a better chance of achieving its one-trillion-dollar economy target by fully optimizing SABER implementation.

PEBEC Director-General Zahrah Mustapha-Audu assured stakeholders that the council remained committed to removing bureaucratic bottlenecks and that progress was being made by participating states toward meeting all disbursement-linked indicators.

Minister of State for Budget and Economic Planning Dr. Doris Uzoka-Anite encouraged stakeholders to address implementation bottlenecks and expressed optimism that the full 750 million dollars in performance-based financing would be accessed by the states.