Hey Naija!, Here Comes Change! Central Bank Governor Emefiele, Proposes A Tax On Phone Calls Longer Than 3 Minutes

You know what, I will continue to say this, I do not know where Nigerian top economists and managers got their own know-how? It is known all over the world that a time of economic recession is definitely not the best time to increase taxes that will directly affect the masses {middle and lower class income earners}. Rather taxes for people at the very upper echelon {high net-worth} and corporation taxes {company} could go up since it does not directly affect the people suffering the effect of the economic recession the most.

But Nigeria seems in it's own world. Look at what a whole Central Bank governor whose country is witnessing the worse economic recession since the 1984 is proposing; The CBN Governor was a keynote speaker at the annual Bankers Committee Dinner and delivered a speech about alternative source of revenue for the government.

In providing an alternative to source of revenue for the government, the CBN Governor suggested that the government imposes a telecoms tax for phone call conversations above 3 minutes. He also suggested that we introduce a tax on properties. 

“There are several ways we can raise additional revenue to finance the increased expenditure that is needed to engender fast and sustainable growth in the economy,” Emefiele said.

“I think we can consider introducing a negligible telecom surcharge to be entirely borne by the initiator of a call. In order to protect the poor and vulnerable amongst us, we could structure it to only take effect after the third minute of talk.

“Some analyses have indicated that the government could earn about N100 billion per annum from this alone. Obviously this surcharge will mainly be borne by middle and upper class people since I do not know many poor people who make calls for more than 3 minutes!”