The Nigerian government is taking aim at lenders by introducing windfall tax on banks’ foreign currency revaluation gains, hoping to use the proceeds to part-finance its spending plans.
President Bola Tinubu wrote to the Senate, asking it to back a legislation that will tax the bumper income derived by banks last year from the revaluation of their FC-denominated assets after a free fall in the value of the naira caused a surge in the value of such assets when converted into the local currency.
“A proposed amendments to the Finance Act Amendment Bill 2023 are required to impose a one-time windfall tax on the foreign exchange gains realised by banks in their 2023 financial statements,” President Tinubu said in a letter to the Senate, read on the floor of the upper parliament on Wednesday by Godswill Akpabio, the senate president.
The tax will help “fund capital infrastructural development, education and healthcare access as well as public welfare initiatives all of…