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Economy | Taxes & Tariffs

Nigerian Government Removes Customs Taxes for Telecom Operators

Mar 23, 2023   •   by   •   Source: Broadcast Media Africa   •   eye-icon 196 views

The Nigerian government has recently announced the removal of excise duty for the telecom sub-sector of Nigeria’s digital economy. The government says this is in line with the Presidential review committee’s suggestions to review the applicability of the Duty to the telecom sector, which is, according to the government, already overburdened with taxation and sundry levies.

 

Nigeria’s Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof. Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, disclosed this at a press briefing organised to provide updates on the status of the 5 per cent excise duty, whose applicability to the telecom sector was objected by the Minister in August 2022, following which the country’s President suspended its application to the telecom sector and set up a Presidential Review Committee on Excise Duty in the Digital Economy Sector.

 

Pantami, the committee’s chairman, expressly set out to review the proposed excise duty in the telecom sector; he said the committee had carried out its national assignment and submitted its report to the President, justifying why the industry should be exempted.

 

The Minister said the committee’s submissions can be summed up in three arguments put forward to justify why additional burden in the form of taxes or any level should not be imposed on the telecom sector to prevent a reversal of the critical contribution the industry is making to the growth of the Nigerian economy.

 

“Our justifications are based on three premises: First, is the fact that operators in the telecoms sub-sector of the digital economy industry currently pay no fewer than 41 different categories of taxes, levies and charges; secondly, telecoms have continued to be a significant contributor to the Nigerian economy in terms of Gross Domestic Product Contribution (GDP).

 

“The third ground for contesting the Excise Duty in the telecom sector is the fact that, despite the increase in the cost of all factors of production across the sector, and naturally leading to increase in costs of products and services, telecom sector is the only sector where the cost of service has been stable and in many cases continued to go down over the past years and therefore, adding more burden will destroy the sector,” the Minister said.

 

Credit:

The post Nigeria: Govt. Removes Customs Taxes For Telecom Operators first appeared in Broadcast Media Africa  on March 23, 2023.

 

 

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