As potential Infrastructure Companies (Infracos) warm up to
grab their licenses, the Federal Government has promised to offer the
successful licensees among others, between five and seven-year tax holidays,
reports
ITRealms.
This,
ITRealms
also reports was one of the highlights of the Nigeria Investment meeting at the
ongoing ITU World 2014 in Doha, Qatar.
For the Communication Technology Minister, Dr (Mrs.) Omobola
Johnson,
ITRealms gathered, Nigeria’s
drive for more investors into the blossoming ICT sector, was based on the Open
Access Model of NCC, which has been adopted for the licensing round,
beneficiaries of the licenses shall among others, get tax holidays to encourage
the Infracos to invest and guarantee adequate returns on investments.
Dr Johson told participants that since ICT are being
qualified in this conference as the next oil and gas, “then Nigeria has struck
a gold mine because ICT is work in progress.”
Principal Partner of KPMG, Mr. Joseph Tegbe, who are
consultants to the soon to flag off licensing regime told the audience that the
investors will be encouraged to veer into areas where many consider to be less
commercially rewarding through subsidy, and grants may be given out to further
their interest in such areas.
They will also be granted pioneer status as part of the
incentives to boost their interest in investing in such areas or zones that may
look unattractive.
Such Infracos will get such incentives that could be up to
30 per cent mark up on their capital expenditure (Capex) and employee tax
holidays as well.
To qualify for these, Infracos will quantify their Capex and
what it will take to rollout and how long it will take to break even.
Earlier, Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian
Communications Commission (NCC) Dr Eugene Juwah, told the audience including
potential investors from Qatar National Bank, Global Operator, Ooredoo,
Vodafone, Qatar and several Diplomats that Nigeria had achieved 96 per cent
teledensity with over 134 million active subscribers, and ICT contribution to
national GDP of over 10 per cent.
Although over $32bn had been invested in this area so far,
there is still a yawning gap in broadband penetration which stands at only six
per cent at the moment. 75 million people connect to the Internet on narrow
band.
He encouraged would be investors to take advantage of this
gap because apart from government and high networth individuals who desire
these services for high data transmission, the banks, education sector and
electronic commerce operators need broadband to carry out their heavy data too.
The NCC, Juwah said, has adopted the Open Access Model to
promote healthy competition, affordability and global best practices in our
regulatory activities.
Nigeria Ambassador to Qatar, Mr Shuaibu Ahmed said the
primary mandate here in Doha, Qatar, is to make Nigeria an investment
destination because Qatar has an investment appetite of over $50bn and desires
to divest its economy from over reliance on oil and gas.
Managing Director of
MTN Nigeria, Mr Mike Ikpoki said MTN with 58million subscribers and over $15bn
investment in the last 13 years is seen to have done well, but there is still
more to do in the area of broadband. MTN, Ikpoki said, “is an investment
ambassador for Nigeria” because at the beginning, only few global players were
interested in coming to Nigeria. But the story has changed now.
Mr Ibrahim Dikko,
Executive Director at Etisalat Nigeria said in six years and over 20 million
subscribers in its bargain, “Etisalat has never known a better investment
profile than this because it is a network of choice for its very good quality
of service because investors’ confidence is high in Nigeria”.
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