Telecos Groan over 52 Taxes, USSD Debt – ALTON

The over N200 billion debt owed by the banks for the Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) provided by telecom operators as well as the 52 taxes by various tiers of governments in the country  are hobbling  telecommunications  operations, according to Association of Licenced Telecom Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) .

Engr. Gbenga Adebayo, chairman, ALTON,

The association urged the federal government to intervene, insisting that the ICT sector was not immune to harsh operating environment.

Engr. Gbenga Adebayo, chairman, ALTON, said that the sector pay more taxes than any sector of the Nigerian economy.

Adebayo, said telecom operators are facing threats to investment, sustainability, and industry expansion due to the fact that sub-nationals are forcing them to comply with tax and levy requests that lack legal foundation, and they have been subjected to repeated taxation.

He enumerated a number of the levies and taxes, including the ecology tax for gaseous emissions, the sewage, sanitation, and public convenience levies for base stations, the fumigation levies—which are levied annually on rights of way (RoW) renewals and the fire service levy—as well as the fumigation charges that states require base stations to pay.

Adebayo, however, argued that in order to address the ongoing problem of multiple taxation in the Nigerian telecommunications sector, the industry must work with the presidential committee on fiscal policy and tax reforms.

On the N200 billion debt, ALTON chairman. at a stakeholders’ forum in Lagos, averred that though the regulator is intervening, but it is at a slow pace, as the banks are yet to pay the USSD debt owed to telecom operators, which has now risen to N200 billion from N120 billion in June.

“Telecom operators have not been able to get commercial banks to agree they will pay the accumulated debt from USSD charges they were yet to remit. In September, Umar Garba Danbatta, former executive vice chairman of NCC, had said the deposit money banks agreed to pay the debt. He didn’t, however, say when it will be paid,” he recalled.

He explained that the banks did not pledge to pay or when they planned to pay; they only acknowledged the existence of a debt, adding that, “The debt had grown to N200 billion while they were waiting to make their payment.”

Recall that operators threatened to disconnect the USSD service of banks in June, 2023, a development that would disrupt transactions activities across the financial system and impact millions of users.