Federal government has granted import waivers for medical equipment and supplies to ease the fight against COVID-19 pandemic. A tweet by Tolu Ogunlesi, Special Assistant to the President on digital and new media said “President Muhammadu Buhari has approved that import duty is waived for medical equipment and supplies to “strengthen health infrastructure” in response to the #COVID19 pandemic.
“President @MBuhari has approved a blanket waiver of import duties for medical equipment and supplies, as part of @NigeriaGov’s efforts to strengthen health infrastructure in response to the #COVID19 pandemic,” the tweet read. The waiver is the latest of the fiscal policies that have been introduced by the federal government to combat the economic implications of the COVID-19 pandemic. Announcing the government’s fiscal response to the pandemic, Zainab Ahmed, the minister of finance, budget and national planning, had said the government would engage other corporates to know what they want the most.
“We don’t want to go and say that we are reducing taxes for companies. Some of the companies, for example, the pharmaceutical industry, what they would want is fast track processes to bring in materials to produce more drugs,” she said. We’ll be giving them import duty waivers, we’ll be giving them support to air freight their cargo because supply chains are broken across the world, there is a need to fast track import of materials that are needed to produce drugs within the country so we have to have those engagements to be more specific.”
