Senate passes CAMA amendment bill into law
The Senate on Tuesday passed the Corporate and Allied Matters Act amendment bill, 2020.
The Act proposes to amend the Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA), 2004 which has not been significantly amended in the last 28 years.
The bill sponsored by the Senate Leader, Senator Yahaya Abdullahi (Kebbi North).was passed by the during a clause-by-clause consideration of the bill at the committee of the whole.
The bill when signed into law by President Muhammadu Buhari, will address aspects aimed at boosting investment in Nigeria.
According to the Senate leader, the business landscape in Nigeria will be reorganized and liberated hitherto, from the heavy constraints of several provisions in the Companies and Allied Matters Act 1990, responsible for obstructing modern business practices in the light of national and global business reforms.
The bill also seeks to provide an efficient means of regulating businesses, minimize the compliance burden of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), enhance transparency and shareholder engagement and promote a friendly business climate in Nigeria.
It will also address the seeming stagnancy and primitive methods of doing business in Nigeria, essentially to meet up with international best practices as well as promote the ease of doing business.
The introduction of model netting provisions in the bill as a means of mitigating credit risks, according to Sen. Abdullahi, would promote financial stability and investor confidence in the financial sector and increase investor confidence in the sector as well as all sectors of the economy.
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Similarly, the economic impact of the bill would ensure more business-friendly regulation for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), increase activities of MSMEs and providing more jobs and guaranteeing economic stability.
Reacting to the passage of the bill, President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, said the legislation when assented into law will rank Nigeria in the first 100 countries in the ease of doing business.
According to him, the Senate considered and passed the bill into law given its significance towards strengthening the economy.
“Presently, we are 131 in the ranking of doing business in the world. If we pass the CAMA bill and the President signs, we will move to be within the first100.
“That means we will jump over 30 positions to be a better country in the ease of doing business. So, it is a very important bill for all of us.
Of course, in the last Senate, all the processes were conducted on this bill, so there will be no need for us to waste too much time on it,” Lawan said.
Meanwhile, the Senate also on Tuesday considered the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) bill, 2020.
The bill, which was also sponsored by the Senate Leader, Sen. Yahaya Abdullahi, was enacted as a decree by the military government in 1999.
