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Thursday,
April 16, 2020 / 8:20 PM / Nifemi Taiyese for WebTV
Partner & West Africa
Tax Leader Deloitte & Touche, Mr. Yomi Olugbenro, has called for
co-ordination of government intervention in stimulating the local economy during
the COVID-19 pandemic, he called for the intervention in an interview with
WebTV.
Speaking further, he
stressed the importance of various relief measures such as that proposed
by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, and the
Finance Minister, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, and the presidential special response team
headed by the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, GCON. He pointed out that "it
is far more critical for the country to ensure proper co-ordination and
synchronization of the various relief measures to ensure channeling of limited
resources in the best productive manner".
According to Olugbenro, a
more holistic and coordinated response is needed from both the managers of the
monetary system and the fiscal managers to battle the broader economic
challenges of Nigeria post COVID, which are; a potential slide into recession,
job losses and disruption of businesses.
Speaking on fiscal policy,
the tax expert said a lot had been done around funding and support at the
central bank level. However from a medical standpoint, the pandemic can be
tackled by upgrading health infrastructure and enabling people to get back to
work.
Highlighting the
announcements made so far from the tax side, Mr. Olugbenro said it has been
around administrative measures that will help tax payers manage compliance
during the COVID 19.
He noted that some of the
measures are essentially around deferral of deadline for returns and payments
at the federal level.
According to the finance
expert, a couple of internal revenue services at the sub-national levels have
come out to announce deferment of return deadlines and fines.
Giving the instance of
businesses that have obligations on a monthly basis to submit returns from
value added tax (VAT) and remittances on employees income tax and with-holding
tax (WHT), to the annual income tax, the deadlines for remittance have been
shifted forward.
He also noted that
the Finance Act passed earlier in the year made provision for some
measure of relief such as reduction in tax rate, tax exemptions and relief to
micro and small businesses which ideally will have been one of the quick things
the government will have announced, he said.
"The crisis is both a
health and medical emergency but also throws up a lot of economic challenges,
most of the responses so far has been around how to contain the medical impact
of the crisis and how to ensure that lives are saved and people are back to
work".
The interventions have
been much heavier on providing stimulus that will help to manage the medical
crises as regards funding support to make sure that things improve in the
medical sector, which is at the frontline of the pandemic.
Olugbenro emphasized that
different economies are responding based on their sizes, performance of the
economy prior to COVID-19 and the size of their respective fiscal buffers. He
noted that there was a lot of context to the measures that different countries
have implemented in response to the pandemic, each unique to its situation.
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