Nigeria suspends 2-month old excise taxes on Telecom, Tobacco

Bloomberg | Nigerian President Bola Tinubu suspended excise taxes on telecommunications services and some locally produced goods introduced 2 months ago.

The new head of state of Africa’s largest oil producer, who took office in late May, signed the executive orders to “address business unfriendly fiscal policy measures and multiplicity of taxes,” according to a statement by his spokesman, Dele Alake, on Thursday. Alake didn’t elaborate.

Some of the charges being reversed by Tinubu include levies on certain imported vehicles, single use plastic products and domestically manufactured alcoholic drinks and tobacco that were introduced by his predecessor Muhammadu Buhari in his final weeks in office.

The president has “promised to run a government that will not make life difficult for Nigerians or asphyxiate corporate entities,” Alake said.

The suspension of taxes adds to a slew of changes introduced by Tinubu that have long been sought by bankers, economists and businesses to revive Africa’s biggest economy from almost a decade of torpor.

Others include scrapping a fuel subsidy that cost the state US$10 billion last year, suspending the nation’s controversial central bank governor, devaluing the naira and initiating an overhaul of Nigeria’s chronically inadequate power industry.