By John Omachonu
Amid growing condemnation over levies and charges by deposit money banks, (DMBs), Zenith bank has amended transaction narration for statutory duty charges on its customers accounts.
But bank customers, reeling under the current harsh economic conditions have continued to criticize growing levies and charges always placed on them in a single banking transaction.
MetroBusinessNews (MBN) reports that they include, Value Added Tax, (VAT),
account maintenance charges,
SMS alert charges, transfer charges, weekend charges and
Postal STAMP DUTY charges, among others.
The argument of some of the customers is that with the current renewed interest in promoting the cashless policy by CBN, these charges by the banks would certainly wipe out their profits and possibly push them out of business.
Presenting a scenario a customer of one of the banks said, “I am Cement Trader. The landing cost of a bag of cement is #4,500 while we sell #4,550. That is a profit of just #50 per bag.
Now on every 2 bags of cement, for instance, a customer transfers #9,100 into my account due to Cashless policy and my profit is #100.
Accordingly and to my amazement, the bank deducted the following on that transaction:
1. #53 transfer charges.
2. #100 Postal STAMP duty.
3. #6.98 VAT.
4. #76 SMS alerts charges.
5. #93.13 account maintenance charges.
As if that was not enough, on every single transaction, both account from which money was being transferred and the account to which money was being transferred were charged for same transaction (electronic transfer Levy) .
How can one survive under this kind of exploitative, harsh and difficult operating environment, “ he asks.
Another customer told MBN that one of the banks charged him N250 electronic transfer levy last week.
However, in a message to its customers on Friday, Zenith Bank said, “Please be informed that the transaction narration for statutory stamp duty charges on your account has been amended and is now captioned as ‘Electronic Money Transfer Levy“.
However, according to another customer, “It seems we are now being tricked and enslaved by the government and the banks.
This is because all these are aside from the multiplicity of taxes at various levels of government, such as income tax, trade permit.
No wonder businesses are folding up and liquidated on daily basis, while some people prefer to keep their cash at homes.”
Already the money collected under the stamp duty charges are still subject of accusations and counter accusations between government functionaries and agencies.
For instance, Muhammed Gudaji Kazaure, a member of the Nigerian House of Representatives from Jigawa State, recently accused the CBN of failing to remit N89.1 trillion to the federal government.
According to Kazaure, the trillions had accumulated from stamp duties and bank charges since 2013. The CBN hid the funds in a private account, Kazaure claimed.
Garba Shehu, the official spokesperson for Buhari, responded that allegations of missing N89 trillion worth of stamp duty were untrue and “totally ridiculous”.
Shehu said that it was impossible for such trillions to lay low in bank accounts without the government’s knowledge. He did suggest that the federal government was in the middle of retrieving stamp duty funds.
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“Let me inform that Mr. President has not completely ignored these matters. Indeed, a duly authorised committee under the Attorney-General & Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), is working to reconcile, recover and transfer all stamp duties into the stamp duties central account. The work is ongoing; it is not finished yet,” Shehu had said.
