The Federal Government of Nigeria has said it would provide tax holidays, grants and fiscal motivations for startups.
The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, disclosed this to newsmen.
He said this will serve as incentives for startups.
According to him, FG will provide incentives such as startup labelling and seed funding to support businesses in the country.
More incentives:
Pantami said Government is creating enabling environment for startups to thrive, especially with the various friendly policies.
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Some of the government policies include the National Startup Bill, the National Council for Digital Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the National Policy for the Development of Indigenous Content in the Telecommunications Sector.
He said as follows:
“The importance of a vibrant, functional innovation ecosystem cannot be underscored, and that is why we have taken deliberate steps to organise this interactive session specifically, to address certain pertinent issues.
“Firstly, how to consolidate our ecosystem, secondly, to understand the market and its challenges, thirdly, to map out our market and set targets, to strengthen our networking strategies and more importantly, to collaborate and partner with the government.
“This is key to the success of our ecosystem because the government has a major role to play in providing an enabling environment.”
Pantami also assured that the president is ready to ensure seamless implementation of the startup bill.
Also speaking, the Director-General, National Information Technology Development Agency, Inuwa Abdullahi, said the agency has a scheme that supports startups.
He said, “We came up with a scheme called Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship Support scheme.
The DG said the agency designed the scheme “to identify talented startups of youths with ideas, place them in developed hubs for training and incubation.”
He equally noted that the scheme has “startups vouchers we give them that will help them as seed funding.”
The seed funds will help them “to develop their products and services.”
Implication:
This is a welcome development for startups in Nigeria.
With tax holidays, businesses will be able to thrive better in the country.
Also, government providing seed funds to businesses will help them scale and lead to greater economic development of the country.
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