The governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN),Godwin Emefiele has advised the government to consider taxing every call above three minutes, in order to enable the country get out of recession on time.
While delivering the keynote address at the Annual Bankers’ Dinner in Lagos on Friday, Emefiele asked the government to consider alternative revenue generating means.
He said“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.
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 analysis have indicated that the government could earn about N100bn 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.”
EMIRALTY 