Mr. Olusola Teniola, President, Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria [ATCON] has urged the Federal Government to step down the proposed Communications Service Tax Bill for now. Below are the key points of his submission:
Decrease in the Inflow of FDI to the Sector
The general rule of investment or principle of investment is that institutional Investors will take their investible funds to countries where the tax rate is low or lowest. As we all know that Nigerian telecoms subscribers are already paying tax because VAT is embedded in calls made and data consumed.
If the bill sails through it would reduce the subscribers’ consumption of data and reduce length of a voice call, this will result in drop in revenue that would accrue to telecoms operators which will in turn reduce the contribution of the sector to our GDP.
The Return on Investment (ROI) would be badly affected as a result of the above illustrations.
Nigeria as a nation needs a lot of investible funds to build infrastructural facilities and provide employment for her teeming population and especially our growing youth.
As we know that Nigeria’ telecom industry still needs circa 50,000 base stations to be able to improve on Quality of Service and to reach the unserved and underserved parts of the nation.
ATCON’s position is that whatever we are doing as a nation must not be done to deter investors from staking their hard earned money on the Nigerian telecommunications businesses, in other words, our policies must continue to be investment friendly.
It has been established that revenue from voice is still significant and it must be stressed here that the investment that is required to deepen the penetration of Broadband in Nigeria is much greater than the one we used to provide voice telephony.
In view of this, the said Communications Service Tax bill should be stepped down so as to encourage investors and make the sector more attractive for foreign direct investors.
ATCON is working with other relevant agencies to increase the Foreign Direct Investment to the sector which is highly capital intensive. This cannot be achieved if the government is considering introducing Communications Services Tax, which will deter further investments to be made.
Loss/Erosion of Innovation and Creativity
ATCON considers the proposed Communications Services Tax bill unnecessary and prohibitive because the operators in the sectors are already faced with multiplicity of taxation.
Imposition of Communications Services Tax bill could stifle innovation and creativity in the sector and this would automatically reverse the gains already made in the past decade. This might lead to increase in unemployment, decrease in revenue accruable to government which would heighten the county’s poverty level.
Telecoms Services Unavailability in Some States
Governments at all levels have at one time or the other expressed the need to gear up the use of ICT to grow and develop their various constituencies. The application of the proposed Communications Services Tax would definitely be a clog in the wheel of roll out of broadband services for the development of the nation-Nigeria. It means that telecommunications services would not be available in some state of the federation.
Speeds-up Chronic Recession
The high taxation takes so much away from both the telecoms operators and subscribers that little or nothing is left to run the business. If government tries to boost the economy with increased government spending, the result is stagflation (simultaneous high inflation and unemployment) instead of prosperity. The only cure for stagflation is to cut both taxes and government spending.
