Barely 24 hours after the federal government inaugurated a N700 million Government Contact Centre (GCC) in Abuja, business experts have started understudying the key roles of the centre.
The government had explained during the launch that the key factor considered for establishing the complex was to enhance ease of doing business through technological innovations and information dissemination.
In an interview yesterday, managing director of Makka Resources Limited, an import and export group, Chief Marcel Uduak said “The centre will crash on arrival because the problem of ease of doing business cannot be solved in a digital centre but at the floor of the National Assembly”.
“The major challenges facing businesses in Nigeria are rooted in the extant laws of the land and not in the activities of government ministries, departments and agencies as thought by the government.
He queried if the current scarcity of forex can be solved at the GCC if an importer approaches it.
In his submission, Uduak called on government to think outside the box by way of reviewing all laws and regulations bordering on ways of doing business.
He said “The most critical cause of poor ease of doing business is policy inconsistency on the part of the government and a common centre like the newly established one in Abuja cannot be of any help”.
“Again, the observed and established cases of multiple taxation cannot be resolved at any centre unless these tax regulations and relevant laws that encourage either over taxation or multiple taxation are amended and GCC cannot be a national assembly where laws and amended.
“Another ease of doing business challenge that cannot be resolved at the new centre is the issue of providing business enabling environment because the centre will not provide needed infrastructure that are needed to consolidate businesses like good roads, power and attractive industrial policies.
Business Hilights recalls that the Minister of Communications, Barr Adebayo Shittu had during the inauguration of the platform, said job opportunities would be created in various fields through the initiative, while the country’s economy would witness a sudden turn around.
He said “The Centre is essentially a technology-enabled multi-channel and multi-lingual platform developed to improve accessibility to government services and information by interested parties”.
“This robust platform presents citizens and interested stakeholders with an avenue to obtain information on (or provide feedback to) government MDAs. It also provides access to services via telephone (multi-lingual agents: Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, English and pidgin. Other languages can be incorporated subsequently) email, chat and social media.”
According to him, the Centre already had in its platform; all the parastatals under the Ministry of Communications, while the Ministries of Power and Aviation have also keyed into the platforms.
Adebayo maintained further that Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) would key into the platform by the time it becomes fully operational, adding the service delivery and performances of MDAs would also be monitored through the system in conjunction with Servicom.
However, business analysts still maintained that the platform cannot be equivalent to a review of laws and regulations that impinge on business development in the country.
