‘Don’t regulate businesses out of existence’

Participants at a policy dialogue in Lagos have urged governments at all levels to minimise issuance of policies and regulations so as not to regulate businesses out of existence.

At the breakfast forum organized by the Initiative for Public Policy Analysis (IPPA), the stakeholders decried various framework for regulating the private sector in the country and concluded that the operators are being made to carry too much burden which if not control can kill striving businesses.

Speaking at the forum, the Director of Research and Advocacy, Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), Dr Vincent Nwani, said multiplicity of regulations, taxes and reforms, insecurity, inefficient and ineffective regulatory bodies and lack of sanctity of contracts were affecting businesses.

A United Kingdom-based health economist, Dr Damilola Olajide who spoke on “Balancing Regulations Vs Product Health Hazards: Case for tobacco use in Nigeria”, observed that available data on tobacco use in the country do not support an overly regulated industry.

According to him, the current level of regulations seems more of doing the dictates of the World Health Organisation (WHO) than what is required locally.

To him, overly regulation will deprive manufacturers of their responsibility to the society, such as funding cancer research in health institutions and schemes designed to check excessive smoking.