The decision, which was the subject of a draft decree, was taken during the Council of Ministers chaired by the president, Mohamed Bazoum (pictured).
According to the government, as reported by the Ecofin news agency, the abolition of the tax aims to “revive the telecommunications sector and promote digital development in Niger through a resumption of investment, particularly in the field of infrastructure”.
The new abolition of the tax comes four years after its reintroduction in 2019 by the government of Mahamadou Issoufou, who first put an end to it in 2018 at the insistence of telecoms operators.
It was reintroduced in 2019, because of “the failure of telecom companies to keep their commitments”, said finance minister Hassoumi Massaoudou.
During the first abolition of the tax, which had brought in the Niger tax authorities some twenty billion CFA francs (around €30 million) in 2017, according to the Parliament’s Economic Affairs Commission, the political parties of the opposition and Niger civil society fiercely opposed it. They all denounced an unjustified tax gift.
Now, said Ecofin, telecoms companies will have to devote part of their income to investing in areas where there is a lack of coverage.
