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•Says regulatory, standardisation, others stifling exportation
From Adanna Nnamani, Abuja
The Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA) has said that the transformation of the country’s economy, would require an absolute reversal of key tax measures and not just postponement.
The reaction came against the backdrop of President Bola Tinubu’s last week’s signing of four Executive Orders, which included the suspension of the five per cent Excise Tax on telecommunication services as well as the Excise Duty escalation on locally manufactured products.
The President also suspended the 2023 Finance Act 2023 deferring its commencement date from 28th May, 2023 to 1st of September, 2023.
But speaking to journalists at the Nigeria Employer’s Summit 2023, in Abuja on Monday, NECA Director General, Mr Adewale Oyerinde, said the taxes have the potential to worsen the nightmares of the Organised businesses and push many into extinction.
Oyerinde said: “We don’t need suspension, we need absolute reversal. We say if you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging. Those taxes have the potential to push organised businesses deeper into the hole of extinction. So, what the executive orders have done and what we are happy about is that it has stopped that trajectory into extinction momentorily and it has given us the opportunity for engagement also. So, between now and September and the time when those extensions are given is for us to engage constructively and let government see the risks inherent in those taxes.
Hopefully, the President will see our reasons and will call for a holistic reform.
He noted that, “If you want to tax, you must take care of three elements. First is what to tax. (What exactly do you want to tax) When do you want to tax and you must balance how do you want to tax. How much do you want tax? If you don’t deal with those three issues, you will initiate taxes and generate revenue from one part and you will be destroying your industry from other parts.”
The DG further explained that the summit was geared towards finding ways of addressing the challenges affecting economic activities such as non-oil exportation.
According by him, finance, standardization and regulatory issues were some of the major impediments of non-oil exportation in Nigeria.
He noted that these impediments have impacted employment generation and encouraged the migration of Nigeria’s best brains in large numbers due to scarcity of employment opportunities.
“Being who we are as the voice of business in Nigeria, it has become important to play our role not only as the conscience of the nation, but also as an organization that contributes effectively and actively to conversations that have to do with natural growth and it is obvious we all have a peculiar challenge. The challenge it multi-dimensional. We also feel that to deal with multi-dimensional challenges, you must deal with it from a multi-dimensional approach.”
“We have forex issues that are bedeviling the country now and once you have forex issues, it affects so many things. It affects your trade balance, it affects your ability to even support organized businesses within the context of input for productive activities, and if they cannot produce, then the ability to expand to employ becomes compromised. The value chain of that problem becomes gigantic in such a way that if you do not deal with it quickly you might be digging your own grave.
“We have problems and we must deal with those problems definitively. So the Summit is to enable us, the country as a whole, to refocus our attention on non-oil exploits that have served us in the past and that can still serve us now.
“So, add the issue of financing, to the regulatory issues that we have and then the issue of standardization also that we are struggling with, you would have built a massive structure of hindrances and impediments to non-oil exports and those are the conversations we are trying to have between today and tomorrow and also, create a path towards solving those hindrances so that the generality of Nigerians, organized businesses can refocus and contribute to national development.” Oyerinde added.
On his part, Mr Taiwo Adeniyi, NECA President and Council Chairman, said that the overall gain of the event was provision of job opportunities in the country and national development.
He said: “We expect that this summit will engender new investment and opportunities that will change the narratives, and the figures of unemployment persons will reduce. So at the end of the summit, we are going to submit a document containing the recommendations of this summit to the Federal government and then follow up with various ministries and agencies of government charged with promoting non oil export.”
