The Federal Government has been urged to deploy tax break incentives for local manufacturers in other to lower costs and encourage more exports.
The concerned freight forwarders also called on the Minister of Finance, Budget and Fiscal Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed to steer the Board of Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) effectively and watch closely, the activities of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), to halt conflicting monetary and fiscal policies applications.
Research consultant to the Congregation of Registered Freight Forwarders Practitioners of Nigeria, Dr Eugene Nweke, in an open letter to the minster, said one of the big expectations from freight forwarders from the NCS Board and its Chairman is that manufacturers and entrepreneurs should be given a restructured tax breaks or even tax holidays.
Nweke said: “Other than encouraging and emphasising more on ‘Product Import Franchise’ (PIF), it should rather see reasons to be at the forefront to foster and encourage Nigerian manufacturers and entrepreneurs to obtain ‘World Product Mandate’ (WPM), allowing them to specialise, lower their costs and export more goods.”
He said: “Our findings show that, it is easier to argue that, by government’s so-called interventions, the Nigeria manufacturers and exporters are not at any tax disadvantage compared to their peers in similar developing nations.
“But the reality is that, our manufacturers, exporters and other entrepreneurs do not have advantages (a situation where a tax regime waiver is in place, but no enabling environment for its prompt utilisation), they are limited by many contending factors of productivity and marketing.
“Ideally, advantages are necessary to offset the fact that Nigeria has such a domestic unstable and not well regulated economy that cannot act as a springboard for low cost exports.
“The consequence being that, a branch plant and products imports franchise economy under the regime of free trade liberalisation scheme, merely consists of few foreign-owned subsidiaries, making profitable amounts on many trading products above the citizens’ purchasing power average in the markets,” he stated.
