Economy
FG’s Control of Unclaimed Dividends Could Cause Mass Exit from NSE—Ayeku
By Dipo Olowookere
President of the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators of Nigeria (ICSAN), Mr Bode Ayeku, has warned that many companies listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) may begin to consider delisting their shares because of the new policy of the federal government.
The Nigerian government is planning to take control of the unclaimed dividends in the capital market believed to be worth N200 billion. This is to be done through the Financial Bill to be forwarded to the National Assembly soon.
Section 39 of the document seeks to establish an Unclaimed Dividends Trust Fund for the transfer of idle shareholders’ reward of firms listed on the stock exchange for three for the use of the federal government.
Also, if the dividends remain unclaimed for 12 years, the funds would become government revenue and would be transferred from the trust fund to the federation account as federation revenue.
Business Post gathered that it would become an offence for any company that fails to transfer its unclaimed dividend to the fund.
The punishment is the payment of five times the value of the unclaimed dividends with accumulated interests at the monetary policy rate (MPR) rate of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), which is currently at 11.50 per cent.
But Mr Ayeku sees this policy as counterproductive because according to him, the federal government never made any attempt to solve the root cause of the unclaimed dividends.
Speaking at the 44th annual conference of the institute last Thursday in Lagos, he said the control of the unclaimed dividends could make companies delist from the NSE as the bill seems to target them.
According to him, this move could compel them to “re-register as private companies as recently done by some companies in order to avoid the take-over of their unclaimed dividends which are private funds.”
The ICSAN leader questioned why the federal government was interested in the idle funds when it “has already collected companies income tax of 30 per cent and education trust fund of 2 per cent from the profit of each company before the dividend was declared, in addition to another 10 per cent withholding tax from such dividend, notwithstanding that it did not invest in the shares of public listed companies generating these unclaimed dividends.”
He advised the government to “replace Section 39 of the Finance Bill 2021 with a provision that unclaimed dividends shall be accessible to shareholders indefinitely and shall not be forfeited by any company after 12 years, but to be kept by the companies as stated in CAMA 2020.”
He argued that, “This is because companies have a contractual responsibility to pay dividends to shareholders and this Bill has the implication of inducing a breach of such contract.”
Mr Ayeku further said the various state governments should “review their complex, unfair and exploitative probate process; arbitrary valuation of assets of deceased leading to compromise by probate officials; high estate duty of 10 per cent which dependents of deceased are compelled to pay notwithstanding that probate/letter of administration is just a change of name and not the sale of assets of the deceased.”
“They should fix a time frame of a maximum of two months for issuance of probate after receipt of complete documentation by the probate registry of each state to enable executors/administrators of deceased shareholders quick claim their unclaimed dividends in order to reduce their hardship,” he added.
By Dipo Olowookere
Selling pressure on large and mid-cap stocks like GTCO, Lafarge Africa, FBN Holdings, Flour Mills and others weakened the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Limited by 0.03 per cent on Wednesday.
The renewed profit-taking came a day after the local stock market rebounded, as investors embarked on cautious trading, monitoring happenings in the macroeconomic environment.
This left the sectorial performance index mixed at the close of transactions in the midweek session, with the banking space losing 0.25 per cent, the industrial goods index shedding 0.02 per cent, and the consumer goods counter depreciating by 0.01 per cent.
However, the insurance sector appreciated yesterday by 3.61 per cent, while the energy space went up by 0.42 per cent.
The All-Share Index (ASI) could not withstand the pressure and lost 14.22 points to the bears to close at 56,024.52 points, in contrast to Tuesday’s 56,038.85 points.
In the same vein, the market capitalisation of the NGX depleted by N8 billion to settle at N30.506 trillion compared with the preceding day’s N30.514 trillion.
NPF Microfinance Bank was the most actively traded stock yesterday for exchanging 100.8 million units valued at N181.4 million, GTCO traded 43.0 million units worth N1.2 billion, Japaul transacted 27.8 million units worth N11.5 million, Fidelity Bank sold 24.3 million units valued at N140.9 million, and Access Holdings traded 23.0 million units for N293.0 million.
In all, investors bought and sold 397.6 million shares worth N6.5 billion in 5,613 deals on Wednesday compared with the 322.5 million shares worth N5.8 billion transacted in 6,165 deals on Tuesday, representing a decline in the number of deals by 8.95 per cent, an increase in the trading volume and value by 23.29 per cent and 12.07 per cent, respectively.
Union Bank topped the losers’ chart after dropping 4.20 per cent to trade at N7.20, Flour Mills also shed 4.20 per cent to close at N33.10, NGX Group declined by 3.11 per cent to N28.00, Prestige Assurance went down by 2.44 per cent to 40 Kobo, and Courteville slumped by 2.08 per cent to 47 Kobo.
On the flip side, Honeywell Flour gained 9.87 per cent to settle at N3.45, Eterna improved by 9.87 per cent to N12.25, FTN Cocoa rose by 9.86 per cent to 78 Kobo, Cornerstone Insurance expanded by 9.78 per cent to N1.01, and Coronation Insurance grew by 9.52 per cent to 46 Kobo.
By Adedapo Adesanya
The Independent Petroleum Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) has advised Nigerians to begin to look into the direction of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) as an alternative energy source to cushion the effect of subsidy removal.
The National President of IPMAN, Mr Chinedu Okorokwo, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Wednesday, as the federal government continues its dialogue with the organised labour over the hike in the price of premium motor spirit (PMS), otherwise known as petrol.
On May 29, 2023, during his inaugural speech, President Bola Tinubu said the payment of subsidy for fuel had ended because there was no provision for it in the 2023 budget beyond June 30.
His announcement triggered the hoarding of fuel by marketers, and when the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited increased the price of the product across its retail outlets, prices of food, transportation and services went up, forcing the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) to threaten a nationwide strike, which was supposed to start today but was stopped by the National Industrial Court.
At a meeting on Monday night between the government and the labour unions, it was agreed that the adoption of CNG as an alternative fuel would be the best option, and it was agreed that the CNG conversion programme earlier planned in 2021 should be revived.
CNG, which is a gas mainly composed of methane and produces less emission, is the cleanest burning fuel operating today with less vehicle maintenance and longer engine life.
In the interview with NAN, Mr Okoronkwo said bringing CNG, which was cheaper than even firewood, as an alternative energy, would create relief for the government and its citizens.
“We have also discovered that bringing an alternative that is cheaper than even firewood which is CNG, will not only create relief for the government and its citizens but it is environmentally friendly.
“The CNG is abundantly available in Nigeria than anywhere in Africa.
“In the Niger Delta region, you see billions of tonnes of gas flare being wasted daily, these are huge amounts that should be accruing to our GDP, but we are wasting it because there is no market for it.
“So, we are asking the government to create the market. How do you create the market?
“What Egypt and India did was to give soft loans to be paid back within stipulated periods; from there, you can get vehicles to use gas instead of fuel,” he said.
“There’s a franchise for the bottling of CNG so that an average woman in the kitchen can use it,’’ he added, noting that the introduction of CNG would cushion the effect occasioned by the high price of fuel currently as a litre of CNG would not cost more than N130.
He advised that repairing the local refineries as well would reduce the impact of the removal as it would eliminate the cost of importation and exportation.
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has disclosed that Nigeria’s tax to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio has been upwardly reviewed to 10.86 per cent from the 6 per cent earlier reported to reflect better data sources and improved estimation using the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) manual.
The OECD manual is an improvement over the System of National Accounts (SNA 2008) classification of taxes.
Although the System of National Accounts conceptual framework and its definitions of the various sectors of the economy are reflected in the OECD’s classification of taxes, the OECD classifications provide the maximum disaggregation of statistical data on what is generally regarded as taxes by tax administrations.
In a disclosure, the statistics office said the country’s total tax revenue compared with its GDP was at that level in 2021, higher than 8.40 per cent in 2020, which was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the previous year, the ratio was 10.20 per cent, marginally lower than the 10.36 per cent recorded in 2018 but higher than the 9.02 per cent in 2017.
The NBS said the revised computation considered more comprehensive coverage of data at the federal, state, and local government levels and revenue items not previously included in the computations, particularly relevant revenue collected by other government agencies.
The review of the tax-to-GDP ratio was initiated by the Federal Inland Revenue Service, which collaborated with the Federal Ministry of Finance and the NBS for better measurement of the ratio.
The data used were sourced from the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation (OAGF), FIRS, NBS, the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), the Joint Tax Board (JTB), and other relevant agencies of government that collect revenue.
