The Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) has called on the various regulatory agencies of the government in the country to avoid the temptation of abandoning their regulatory function which is at the core of their establishment for revenue generating function.
The President of LCCI, Mr. Babatunde Paul Ruwase who made this call in his opening remarks at the Regulatory Environment Roundtable organized by the Chamber yesterday in Lagos observed that when regulatory agencies make regulation a revenue generating function, it becomes very cumbersome as they would want to extort as much money as possible from the business community.
Ruwase added that if agencies concentrate on regulation with clarity and standard in the expectation, there won’t be any problem and issue of backlogs would not arise.
According to him,” We don’t believe that regulation should be a revenue generating function because that is also the problem that we have. When you make regulation a revenue generating function, then it becomes very cumbersome and they would want to extort as much money as possible from you but if it is actually regulation and there is clarity and standard in the expectation, I don’t think it is going to be a problem and there won’t be this backlog.
“And if you also have a situation where those that do not pass the requirements are quickly informed and everybody sees it, like if there is a place where you know whether your application has been approved or not and there are timelines and clarity in all this process, you won’t have this backlog. When you fail, you know you have failed, if you don’t get 50%”.
Speaking against the backdrop of insinuations in some quarters that there were too many regulators in Nigeria, the LCCI President disagreed with that position saying that the problem with regulatory agencies was overlapping of functions which in so many cases had led to confusion and loss of time and money.
He however suggested that the problem of overlapping of functions could be resolved with efficient and effective Single Window platform where one can put in his or her application and whoever is concerned would look at the problem and take a decision.
According to him,” We don’t have too many regulators but where we have overlap is where we can synergize to make sure that when they are talking to somebody…, we are talking about single window for instance, if you have a single window, it is a window where when you put in your application, whoever is concerned will look at that problem and make a decision.
“So, what we need to do is to make them work together, there are no too many regulators because they have specific function that they are performing. But then, it is cumbersome if we have to move from table to table whereas you can just log in your application and the relevant agencies will just look at what is relevant to it and then you move on.
“So, when they say you are okay, you are okay, you don’t have to move to another government regulator who will take you back to the beginning again. Every person will look at what concerns him and then you are off and that is the sought of thing we want, single window where for instance, all regulatory requirements are made and scrutinized at the same time by the relevant authorities”.
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