 Let's see the breakfast and plus TV Africa's let's just quickly run through you know a second discourse this morning and we're looking about we're looking at the concerns from the centre for promotion of private enterprise they have actually expressed major concern over the passage of the 2022 finance bill by the National Assembly. Mudo Yusuf who's the director of the think thank he said that the hasty passage of the bill calls to question the representation role of the National Assembly adding that there was no room for public hearing and engagement with stakeholders in the consideration of the bill now and in my interest you know that on Wednesday just about you know some weeks ago the National Assembly passed the finance bill legislation that proposes key reforms to specific tax taxation customs exercise and fiscal laws the bill amendments several laws including the capital gains tax act companies income tax act and personal income tax act that's the petroleum profit tax act as well as time duty act value added tax and public procurement act the organization argued however that it's very curious and puzzling that the senate gave just 24 hours notice for stakeholders to attend a public hearing on the bill the house of representative gave a general notice of about three weeks but the house passed the bill before the date of the advertised public hearing which was for the 13th of January 2023 the bill has since then been forwarded to the president Mohammed of Bahari for ascent this morning we have joining us this morning the director himself uh muda yusuf it's good to have you join us this morning thank you good morning well i'd like to ask what should be and what is you know the best practice in terms of you know bills and it's ascent the entire process what is the best standard well the best practice for the enactment of a law is that in the process of preparing the bill before it is passed on for any ascent or final resolution stakeholder engagement should take place that is invitation of stakeholders to get their perspectives which we call public hearing in this particular instance it was actually part of the plan that there should be a stakeholder public hearing and just as you said in your review you can see how important this bill is look at the range of legislation that this bill is going to amend and also imagine the impact of this bill and the amendments on businesses on investors and on the citizens and the whole idea of representation is for the members of the national assembly to represent the people that elected them and the best way you can represent them is also to listen to them on whatever major legislation that you want to embark upon so because of the importance of this bill particularly to investments because we are talking about investment we are talking about job creation we are talking about poverty reduction all those cannot happen if you don't have the right kind of legislative environment for investment to take place so in this particular instance the senate gave only 24 hours for public hearing you know imagine for this range of bills that require people to prepare you have to travel to Abuja and all of that and all you got was just 24 hours notice that for me is very undemocratic it's unfair and the protocol or the procedure is that before you enact this bill you must hold a public hearing the house of rep on the other hand initially was a lot more magnanimous it gave three weeks which is more like it the public hearing was supposed to be held on the 13th of January but for some strange reasons I imagine that the pressure must have been coming from the senate they also just passed the bill even before the date of the of the public hearing so for the business community this is coming as a huge shock because why people are busy celebrating for Christmas and New Year they have passed this bill so but let me because I don't even know to many people murder use of less even coming here now so is that going to be an implication or is there an implication for the passage of this bill without you know stakeholders contribution or being part of the entire process what is the implication where there are quite a lot of implications I mean you can see the number of bees that have been amended just a few let me just mention a few that's going to be and and this is contained in the amendment an imposition of 0.5 percent levy on all goals that are imported from outside of Africa don't forget already we pay import duty on this bill we pay all manner of charges on this bill I mean on this on these goods already we have 0.5 percent levy for a course now a proposal is coming to impose another 0.5 percent levy on all goals that are imported from outside of Africa and don't forget there are so many things that we import from outside Africa particularly equipments some raw material that are not available in Africa machineries and all of that so if you impose another 0.5 percent on that not minding the fact that there are all their charges even VAT not minding the challenges that this is are going through with foreign exchange not minding the challenges of access to credit inflation and all of that this is an additional burden not just on business but on citizens secondly there's a proposal in that bill that all services will not be liable to exercise duty what exercise duty means is that it's a tax on all your services any service that you render to your customer will attract a tax already we have VAT on most of these services we are we told in tax these companies pay company income tax the bill sort of taxes already go to the federal and to the state so where is this coming from i've never heard it anywhere in the world that you impose exercise duty on all services the risk that we impose was not stated in the bill this will be determined by presidential order to pass around that in hanging over the business community which of course require that there has to be some consultation or engagement that did not happen that's also a proposal to increase the tertiary education tax currently it is 2.5 percent it's not been moved to 3 percent so you can imagine and also also all other proposals like gas learning tax the tax on the on gas planning company i think was moved from 30 percent or so to 50 percent irrespective of of the amount of gas that you fly yeah so if you have this and you have business already paying company tax of 30 percent they are already paying tertiary education tax of 1 percent of their profit they are paying what you call net that net there is a technology development agency tax also of 1 percent of profit they are paying nascent nascent tax also something related to technology agency 0.25 percent of their profits they are paying police transport levy of 0.005 percent of their profits one would begin to wonder what for any contracts mood you serve uh the next question should be i mean what is the reason for all of this is there a reason why the national assembly would you know go on with this hasty passage of the bill and will that it's now that you know it's been passed of course it's in front of the president is there anything that can be done because i have looked at the engagement i haven't really seen you know a public engagement i'm talking about Nigerians engaging on this maybe that's because it was slipped into the process or the period of festivity and everyone has been you know carried away with the celebration and have forgotten about you know some critical issues that might come back to bite you know them in the new year so but quickly in less than a minute is there a way out of this is there a reason for this of course there is a way we have appealed we have appealed to the president to withdraw nascent i mean they say this this is democracy if people have to be carried along if you need to be consulted and the processes have been violated by the national assembly and if that fails of course there's also the legal option which is we can prove to the cause that there has been an infraction in the procedure of of a passage of the bill of course the court has defined a say on matters like this we can interpret the constitution but the bottom line is that this is not fair to the business community it's not so fair to the citizens well we can only continue to talk about this and hope that you know the president withholds his ass and you know to uh this particular bill and Nigerians will wake up to the reality of the implication of all of this if it becomes a law well thank you so much for being part of the conversation we do appreciate your time Muda Yusuf thank you all right then and that's the size of a conversation on the breakfast this morning we hope to return tomorrow with more interesting headlines if you missed out on any part of the conversation that's fine to follow us on facebook twitter and instagram and do subscribe to our youtube channel at plus tv africa and plus tv africa lifestyle and it was messy before we joined the newsroom at nine o'clock for the news proof piece that was good morning