Nigeria Employers Consultative Association, NECA, has called on the Federal Government to stop granting waivers and concessions to selected individuals or groups to import at concessionary rate, lamenting that such waivers are detrimental to other players in the economy.
President of NECA, Mr Larry Ettah, at the body’s 58th Annual General Meeting, AGM, in Lagos, argued that failure of trade policies to recognise the importance of tariff had undermined industrial activities in Nigeria.
According to him, tariff policy should be decided on a sector by sector basis with adequate considerations for the imperatives of sector strategies, Saying “it is important to recognise that tariffs are instruments of industrial policy and as such have implications for employment, investment, technology and productivity growth.”
He insisted that planed review of waivers should pass through the Tariff Review Committee under the Federal Ministry of Finance, noting that the rampant cases of duplication of taxes and levies across the country had added to the cost of doing business.
