Hardball
No mas, no mas — Spanish for “no more, no more” — came into universal boxing lingo in November 1980.
Panamanian Roberto Duran had, earlier in June 1980 in Montreal Canada, drubbed American Sugar Ray Leonard to his first ever defeat, in a slam bang that a popular American international magazine described as the ring artist losing his title to a banger in Montreal.
But the November 1980 rematch was another prospect altogether. After Sugar Ray had toyed with the Panamanian “fist of stone” for eight painful rounds, Duran suddenly turned away from his sweet tormentor, a few seconds to the end of round eight — no mas, no mas. It was Boxing’s most famous surrender!
Well, this is no boxing history recap. It is just locating, in the Duran sentiment, how Nigerians are quitting transactions at Point of Sale (PoS) terminals, a policy that wasn’t only meant to boost the government’s cashless policy but also, if you add the N50 stamp duty charge on PoS transactions, supposed to generate tax from that policy.
The snag though is that the merchants have illegally passed the N50 charge to their customers — in retail supermarkets, fuel stations, etc — a practice the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has declared illegal but which nevertheless has continued, because the apex bank has done little to enforce it.
Well, the market response has been stunning! According to a front page report in The Nation of March 9, Nigerians are shunning PoS transactions in a big way — no mas, no mas!
Stats from the Nigerian Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) report reveal the use of PoS, to pay for transactions, dropped by 4.83 billion between December 2019 and January 2020 — from 46.13 billion transactions in December 2019, to 41.3 billion in January 2020.
The actual value of the reduced deals is N60 billion — from the N373 billion posted as stamp duty for December 2019, to N313 billion in January 2020. That is N60 billion less in the public till, in consumer tax!
You could say what the heck and why all the fuss over just N50? Yet, you could see and feel how ultra-sensitive the market has reacted to what it correctly read as wrong consumer taxation, with a chunk of the market voting with its feet — no mas, no mas!
The CBN and allied monetary authorities had better enforce the payment of stamp duty by the rightful payers under the law. Otherwise, if this negative trend continues, the government’s cashless policy could suffer a terrible setback.
That could have terrible crime implications, as brazen cash robbery, which the modest success of the cashless policy appears to have somewhat curtailed, could come roaring back.
That won’t be pretty — either for the private pocket or for the economy.
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