LAGOS: Mobile phone and data members in Nigeria will now have to spend more after the government approved a 50-percent boost in tariffs, as the state battles one of its worst cost-of-living crises in decades.
The market regulation, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), said earlier this week that it approved the tax hike “in response to prevailing business circumstances”.
The taxes have remained the same in Africa’s fourth-largest business since 2013, the regulation said.
The climb will heap more force on Nigerians already grappling with prices that sits at a nearby 30-year substantial of 34. 8 per share.
” This is not the right time to increase the cost of making names,” 51-year-old investor Adebisi Olanrewaju told AFP.
” Things are very cheap and this increase will only add to our problems. “
The boost will push the lowest cost of telephone calling to 9. 6 naira ( about$ 0. 0062 ) per minute from 6. 40 rupees.
” The authorized modification is aimed at addressing the considerable space between operational costs and existing taxes while ensuring that the distribution of services to consumers is no compromised,” the NCC said in a statement on Monday.
Telecommunications businesses in the West African nation had first proposed a 100-percent price increase in the face of rising administrative costs.
Users, nevertheless, accepted the administration’s proposed costs, Gbenga Adebayo, president of the Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria, said.
” The tax assessment had become a matter of the preservation and conservation of the business,” he told AFP on Wednesday.
” Without the tax assessment, Nigeria’s telecommunications sector may have begun to experience considerable service problems. “
Nigeria’s consumer protection agency, the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, said in a speech on Wednesday that the hike if “directly convert into observable and tangible support enhancements”.
