…Disagrees with FIRS  on tax amnesty

By Emeka Anaeto

With a combined funds outlay totaling N800 billion in credit intervention in the micro, small and medium enterprises, MSME, sector the National Vice Chairman South West zone of the National Association of Small and Medium Enterprises, NASME, Mr Jemi Alade, said it is very hard to tell if there has been any impact so far on the fortunes of the sector.

Speaking to Vanguard SME & Entrepreneurship in his office in Lagos last week Alade gave a critical review of the 2016 state of affairs in SME sector, especially as it relates to government’s interventionist programmes and concluded there was not much to be reckoned with as progress.

He stated: “On intervention funds, we see so many things floated but the monies have not gone to the proposed beneficiaries. All the promises given in 2016 failed because budget was not implemented.

“It is very hard to tell what has been achieved with those funds and I don’t know of any SME operator that has received the credit facilities, may be one or two out of millions.

“There is no clear picture that the interventions have assisted in bridging the huge funding gap in the sector”.

Bank

The Federal Ministry of Finance, Central Bank of Nigeria, Bank of Industry as well as several State Governments were among the government establishments that have set up funds to intervene in provision of direct credit facilities to the SMEs and selected real sectors including agriculture.

However, Alade noted that NASME was able to push in its tax amnesty proposal to the Ministry of Finance.

NASME had earlier in the year packaged a tax amnesty proposal with the technical support of a leading accounting firm, Akintola Williams Deloitte, and lobbied the Federal Ministry of Finance to, among other things, wave all outstanding penalties, charges and interests on all unpaid taxes standing against every MSME up to 2016.

He stated: “Our initiative on tax is yielding fruits, it is now being considered. The amnesty has been in place. “But we want it across board. Instead, deadlines or cut-off dates should be eliminated totally up to end 2016”.

“Again the initiative should be from the ministry and not the Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS.”

He also noted that government has started paying attention to enforcing patronage of made-in-Nigeria products for government procurements.

He stated: “Though it is still at dialogue level championed by the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, MAN, we expect an entrenchment of right of first refusal to local producers on all government procurements. This would enable the producers to grow and compete with overseas producers.”

Alade also observed increased wave of foreign capacity building programmes in Nigeria, but lamented that the initiatives were counter-productive.

He stated: “We have also seen the overseas development partners coming in to dictate agenda for developing our SME sector which is wrong. They collect data and ideas for their own use and interest”.

He also lamented that almost all the relevant ministries have these capacity development departments but they are poorly staffed and have all gone moribund.

He, therefore suggested that Nigeria needs to strengthen its institutions to do all that the development partners are currently doing.

“If we want to get it right we need to look at this critically and correct the anomalies. It is not reasonable to expect the foreign agencies to have our best interest at heart in the so called development assistance.

“Are they really helping even when they rejected our exports and coming back to us to say they are helping us meet the standard.

“Nigeria is old enough to be serious with its development and help itself, and for Nigeria to develop it has to develop the individual. Nigeria is underdeveloped because the Nigerian man is underdeveloped. The government agencies are moribund and inefficient due to the quality of manpower. So long as we have this faulty system we cannot get results”.

Alade also noted the need for clear policy direction and framework to drive development of the SME sector.

In addition he lamented the lack of SME development framework, and lack of enabling environment that could propel progress in the sector.

He stated: “The business environment is so hostile forcing operators and the survivors to be crooked”.