CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele was the central speaker ath the annual Bankers committee dinner where he made an oration about alternative sources of revenue for the government.
Emefiele proposed that in getting alternative sources of revenue for the government, the federal government should impose a telecome tax on phone conversations that exceed a total of three minutes.
In his words :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 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!”
