President Muhammadu Buhari has requested the National Assembly to include animal feed in the list of basic items exempted from the Value Added Tax (VAT) increase as contained in the Finance Act.

The Finance Act, which the President assented to in January this year, is before the House of Representative for amendment.

Speaker of the House of Representative, Femi Gbajabiamila, made the announcement on Tuesday while reading the president’s letter to the House.

The bill for the fresh amendment of the Act seeks to change its effective date law to February 1, 2020.

The President had announced through his media adviser a VAT increase from 5% to 7.5% in January. He also announced the exemption of 20 basic items from the increase.

This included basic food items such as additives (honey), bread, cereals, cooking oils, culinary herbs, fish, flour and starch, among others.

The new bill before the parliament, however, seeks to amend the Act to add animal feed to that list, among other adjustments.

“This bill seeks to amend the Finance Act 2019, as recently passed by the National Assembly, by clarifying: that the administrative effective date for the increase in value-added tax from 5% to 7.5% is the 1st of February 2020.

“That ‘animal feeds’ are included in the list of basic food items that are exempt from value-added tax and aspects of the tax holiday incentive for agriculture by targeting this incentive to small and medium-sized companies that invest in primary crops, livestock, forestry and fishing agricultural production.

“This incentive is also to be administered by the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission pursuant to the industrial development (income tax relief) act.”

According to Buhari, his assent of the Finance Bill in January was aimed at reforming Nigeria’s tax laws “to align with global best practices”

SOURCE: AGRONIGERIA