Online vendors and business owners are set to get incentives for selling and marketing their businesses on social media or websites as the Federal Government has disclosed a new policy in the works.
According to the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Pantami, there will soon be a number of incentives given to entrepreneurs and investors migrating from traditional to electronic businesses in Nigeria.
Pantami, who said this while speaking at the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations, NIPR, Federal Capital Territory Chapter’s 2019 Annual General Meeting and Conference, noted that some of the incentives would include provision of free domain name for businesses that intend to go online as well as developing laws that would protect online businesses.
“We are providing domain name for free for businesses that want to go online, and in the future time, we want to start giving incentives to people that want to migrate from traditional business to electronic business in order to support them. Government will provide incentives at certain levels in order to encourage them.
“We are still working on some subsidiary legislations and regulatory instruments that would protect businesses online. This is because if people migrate, they need to be protected. We are also working on all these things and I hope that by the middle of next year, a lot would be achieved in those areas,” Pantami said.
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Pantami also spoke on the directives given to mobile telecommunication companies to reduce mobile internet data subscription cost. He said that this was in line with the government’s focus on increasing broadband penetration while ensuring that it is affordable to Nigerians.
“We want to make sure that broadband penetration is increased significantly. We want to make sure that broadband is also affordable to Nigerians, in terms of Internet access. That is why we have directed NCC to sit down with operators and review the prices. This is because if you look at the prices, sometimes, and the quality of service, it is not encouraging.”