The cost of calls, data, and SMS may rise after the former president of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, signed a five per cent excise duty on telecommunication services into law despite protests against the move.
As part of his last acts as president, Buhari signed the Finance Act 2023 into law on May 28, 2023. According to section 21 of the Principal Act amended by substituting for subsection , a new subsection , all services, including telecommunication services would be charged excise duty.
Since July 2022, the Federal Government has tried, many times, to implement a five per cent excise duty on telecom services to boost revenue generation. Many of these attempts were met with pushbacks and cumulated in a recent communication by the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, that the government has exempted the telecoms sector from excise duty tax.
The government announced in March 2023 that it was concerned about the sufferings of Nigerians and had exempted telecoms from excise duty. However, its new Fiscal Policy Measures for 2023 via a circular dated 20 April 2023, signed by the former Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, revealed it had gone back on its words.
“We are supposed to implement from June 1, but we have not started yet because there is no modality for collection yet. We were just informed that it has been gazetted. We don’t know how this will impact cost, but we are waiting for modalities.”
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