MTN Nigeria was the first company to break the N1 trillion annual revenue in Nigeria. It is also one of the publicly traded companies in Nigeria with a market cap of N1 trillion and above. Magically, it is also one of the companies that is sustaining the Nigerian economy through taxes:
“In 2021, MTN Nigeria’s total tax contribution to all government agencies including the FIRS amounted to N757.6bn while FIRS collected a total of N6.4trn tax revenue in the year. Specifically, MTN Nigeria paid a total of N618.7bn in direct and indirect taxes to the FIRS in the 2021 tax year, representing approximately 13.5 percent of the total FIRS collection for the year.” Yes, one company is contributing 13.5% of the total tax revenue within FIRS purse.
For all the emergent celebrations of small companies, it is only when nations can nurture and inhabit big firms will they transition to the next level. Why? Big companies have the resources to fund the next layers of massive capital-intensive opportunities and feed the purses of governments. We admire those small firms, but they have to grow – and that is the major call for the nation.
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My postulation remains that every opportunity has a factor of 6 multiple for Nigeria to attend its near-term stable equilibrium state because the GDP should be $3 trillion, not the paltry $500 billion we have now. If that happens, it means we will have in various forms six “MTNs”, six “Dangote Groups”, six “everything”, etc. Imagine the implications for Nigeria!
MTN Nigeria Communications paid a total of N757bn direct and indirect tax to government agencies in 2021, it has been revealed. This was disclosed during the National Tax Dialogue Event organised by the Federal Inland Revenue Service.
A statement titled, ‘MTN Named Best Tax Compliant Organisation in Nigeria: … recognised as one of the top 20 taxpayers by FIRS,’ signed by the company’s secretary, Uto Ukpanah, revealed that the company’s total tax contribution to all government agencies reached N757.6bn in 2021.
It said, “In 2021, MTN Nigeria’s total tax contribution to all government agencies including the FIRS amounted to N757.6bn while FIRS collected a total of N6.4trn tax revenue in the year.
“Specifically, MTN Nigeria paid a total of N618.7bn in direct and indirect taxes to the FIRS in the 2021 tax year, representing approximately 13.5 per cent of the total FIRS collection for the year.”
“While the past 24 months have been challenging for our country and nations worldwide, we are committed to supporting the Federal Government’s ongoing Economic Growth Recovery Plan.
“We will continue to invest heavily in network expansion with a focus on expanding access to under-served communities. We also plan to connect an additional 2,000 rural communities in 2022.”
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It’s also the big companies that help make SMEs viable, so if you don’t have a good number of big companies, your small companies will struggle, because bigger and guaranteed orders come from big companies, and not the disparate and disjointed purchases that come from consumers whose incomes aren’t regular. Governments like big companies too, because getting taxes from them is easier, rather than chasing around millions of small businesses.
Again, our universities are not growing because we don’t have big corporations that can fund expensive researches, nobody looks towards small businesses to fund big ticket researches, so if your economy lacks entities that can make it happen, the educational institutions will continue to be below par, government has many limitations.
Think about thousands of companies that are part of supply chain of Apple, Toyota or Boeing, it’s the sort of things we should intentionally work towards. If we have a plan where for every decade, at least out of 1000 medium enterprises, 30 can graduate to big companies; that is what actual growth looks like, not littering everywhere with small businesses that never grow beyond their small state.
MTN brings more tax money than the five biggest banks combined…
Have you seen the first quarter of the 2022 report about it profits?
The company is doing well and playing some surportive roles to the Nigerian economy.