Electronic transfer levies have generated N80.86bn as revenue for the three tiers of government in the first six months of 2023.
This is according to data obtained from the Federation Account Allocation Committee communique for January to June 2023. It also followed a surge in electronic transfers that had been recorded in the country, in recent times.
Electronic money transfer levy was introduced as a source of government revenue in the Finance Act 2020, which amended the Stamp Duty Act to tap into the growth of electronic funds transfer in Nigeria.
The EMT levy is a singular and one-off charge of N50 on electronic receipt or transfer of money deposited in any deposit money bank or financial institution on any type of account on sums of N10,000 or more.
Since its introduction, it had been a steady source of income for the three tiers of government. The government made N13.8bn from electronic money transfer levies in January, N11.65bn in February, N14.49bn in March, N15.12bn in April 2023, N14.37bn in May, and N11.44bn in June.
The government was also moving to surpass its N137.03bn projection for 2023. In its 2023 – 2025 Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper, the Budget Office of the Federation hoped to make N137.03bn from EMTL in 2023, N157.59bn in 2024, and N189.11bn in 2025.
“The Main Pool, VAT Pool, and Electronic Money Transfer Levy are projected at N4.89tn, N2.74tn, and N136.35bn, respectively, in 2023,” it said.
The office added that the government made N111.84bn from EMTL in 2021. E-payment transactions had recorded a surge in adoption since the onset of the pandemic in 2020.
According to data from the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System portal, the total value of electronic transactions was N108.42tn in 2019. This grew to N162.89tn in 2020 and surged to N278.38tn in 2021. By 2022, cashless transactions jumped to N395.47tn.
The International Monetary Fund recently stated that the value of mobile money transactions in Nigeria grew to 9.72 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Recently, the National President, Association of Mobile Money Agents in Nigeria, Victor Olojo, reported that the EMTL would continue to increase for the foreseeable future.
