Chairperson of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, Taiwo Oyedele, said his committee’s Emergency Economic Intervention Bill will eliminate unnecessary taxes and levies imposed on businesses, which he said, undermine the ease of doing business.
Speaking with The Guardian in Lagos, he said the most pressing issues businesses face next to insecurity range from inflation, skyrocketing exchange rate, exorbitant transportation costs, and unemployment to dwindling economic opportunities.
“Our approach was to identify what can be done immediately. Some solutions will take time, like trying to amend the Constitution, which is not something that can be done in two months. Nigerian businesses are being asked to pay some counterproductive taxes, these can be stopped. Some companies in Nigeria are being asked to pay taxes and levies in foreign currency, which is impacting negatively, this must be stopped.
“Transporters are also being held by the jugular and are paying as much as 40 taxes and levies to move goods from one location to the other. Exporters are being asked to provide over 20 certifications just to export goods while verification portals simply create added bureaucracy and defeat the ease of doing business. These are some of the things we thought we could address immediately but unfortunately, a good number of them are already legislated. Some of these laws are quite old which means we could not get the president to sign an order or make a pronouncement, which would be against the spirit of due process.
“What we have done is to identify some of these provisions and put them together in one bill, which we have called the Emergency Economic Intervention Bill. We aim to present this to the lawmakers and have them deliberate it as a single bill and once it is passed and assented to by the president, it takes effect immediately,” he said.
After this, he said, the committee would then work on the more structural, critical reforms, which will take a longer time.
Speaking on if the real sector should be subsidised or not, he said there is nothing wrong with that but, “we have to be intentional about what we are subsidising”.
“In the U.S. for instance, farmers are heavily subsidised to help them produce. We cannot expect manufacturers to borrow at 25-30 per cent to manufacture or farmers to borrow at double digits and put out affordable produce. Manufacturing and farming are productive activities and can be subsidised because of their importance,” he said.
