Commercial Banks To Return Excess Charges On N50 Stamp Duty

Investigations have revealed that Nigerian Banks may have to make refunds for some of the charges as the guideline, and modalities for the N50 stamp duty is yet to be finalized and is still under deliberations by a coalition of government agencies, including NIPOST.

A Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, official revealed that banks would be made to refund the excess charges once the modalities of the charges has ben finalized and released.

Banks had begun charging the N50 stamp duty on inward coming transactions of current bank accounts that is above N1,000 since January when the CBN gave the directive.

Findings by Leadership revealed that some banks had charged the stamp duty on some accounts that were not current while some others had deducted the duty charge when there was no transaction on the accounts charged.

Meanwhile, the external reserves of the country, which in recent times have consistently been depleting, began a slow increasing trend last week. The reserves which had dipped to $27.789 billion on February 18, jumped gradually last week to stand at $27.807 billion as at February 25, 2015, according to the latest data on the website of the Central Bank of Nigeria.

This followed increase in international crude oil price amid sustained decrease in crude oil production in the United States as well as ongoing efforts by the OPEC producers and Russia to place a cap on their respective crude oil exports.

Also the value of the naira which had been very volatile last week closed at N315 to the dollar at the parallel market. The naira which had risen to N250 to the dollar quickly dropped in value to N350 at the close of business on Thursday due to speculators’ demand before appreciating on Friday.