Electronic transfer levies generated N80.86bn for the government in the first half of 2023.
According to data obtained from the Federation Account Allocation Committee communique for January to June 2023, a surge in electronic transfers had been recorded in the country, leading to its implementation.
The Finance Act 2020 introduced the electronic money transfer levy to tap into Nigeria’s growing electronic funds transfer.
The EMT levy is a single and one-time fee of N50 applied to electronic receipts or transfers of money deposited in any deposit money bank or financial institution, regardless of the type of account, for sums of N10,000 or more.
The electronic money transfer levies have been a steady income source for all three tiers of government. In January: N13.8bn, February: N11.65bn, March: N14.49bn, April: N15.12bn, May: N14.37bn, June: N11.44bn.
The government expenditure framework
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.
“It said the Main Pool is projected at N4.89 trillion, the VAT Pool at N2.74 trillion, and the Electronic Money Transfer Levy at N136.35 billion for the year 2023.”
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 reported mobile money transactions in Nigeria grew to 9.72% of GDP in 2020 due to COVID-19.
The National President of the Association of Mobile Money Agents in Nigeria, Victor Olojo, expects EMTL to keep rising.