Nigeria's huge oil refinery built by Africa's richest man Aliko Dangote received its first crude deliveries, the company said on Saturday, in the latest step to starting up the delayed megaproject, reports AFP.

Billed as Africa's largest of its type, the 650,000 barrel-per-day Dangote refinery could be a game changer for Nigeria's economy when fully operational by helping ending the country's reliance on fuel imports.

Dangote Petroleum Refinery received an initial shipment of one million barrels of crude from Agbami deepwater field and began loading on Friday, the company spokesman said Saturday.

The initial run will be for production of diesel and aviation fuel before moving on to petrol output.

Dangote gave no date for the actual start of refinery production.

Though one of Africa largest oil producers and the continent's top economy, Nigeria relies almost totally on imported fuel and diesel because of a lack of refining capacity.

Nigeria swaps crude worth billions of dollars for petrol that it had subsidised for years to keep prices cheap for its domestic market.

Fuel imports and subsidies caused a huge drain on foreign exchange when Nigeria was struggling with dwindling oil revenues and foreign currency shortages.

"Dangote Petroleum Refinery can meet 100 per cent of Nigeria's requirement of all refined products, gasoline, diesel, kerosene, and aviation jet, and also have surplus of each of these products for export," the company said in a statement.

The facility sits on 2,635 hectares (6,500 acres) of land at the Lekki Free Zone on the edge of Lagos city and cost an estimated $19bn, according to local media.

The refinery, first scheduled to open in 2021, was officially inaugurated by then president Muhammadu Buhari earlier this year and was supposed to begin operations in June.

Since coming to office in May, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has ended the long-standing fuel subsidy and floated the naira currency in economic reforms he says will attract foreign investment and build long term growth.

The former Lagos governor has called on Nigerians to be patient with his reform programme as the initial impact saw fuel prices soar, a sharp fall in the value of the naira and an increase in the cost of living.

MSH

Companies and organisations will be required to file tax returns on the income generated by employee welfare funds from the current fiscal year and pay a 27.5 percent tax on the earnings. 

The Income Tax Act 2023 incorporates the provision, lifting the tax exemption and amnesty on the compulsion to file returns for funds such as provident funds, gratuity funds and workers' profit participation funds maintained by the private sector.

The law, however, has exempted government-managed provident funds from taxation, raising questions.

TIM Nurul Kabir, executive director of the Foreign Investors' Chamber of Commerce & Industry, said there were many other avenues to collect tax.

"Employees benefit from provident funds after their retirement. So, the authority should not slap taxes on retirement benefit."

He said while levying the tax, the government has not treated provident funds of the private and public sectors equally.

"It is discriminatory," he said, adding that they would appeal to the tax authority for the withdrawal of the tax on income from provident funds.

Debabrata Roy Chowdhury, director for legal, regulatory and corporate affairs at Nestlé Bangladesh PLC, said the introduction of income tax on trust funds would lower the overall income from such schemes.

"This will have an adverse long-term impact on retired employees of private organisations."

Chowdhury urged the authority to address the issue in line with the spirit of the government's initiatives aimed at ensuring social security for private sector employees.

"The recent introduction of the universal pension scheme for private sector employees is a good example of that."

A senior official of the NBR, on condition of anonymity, said the income of government-managed provident funds was exempted in line with the Provident Fund Act 1925.

He said provident funds under the private sector had been historically exempted and there was no requirement to submit tax returns. As a result, it was unclear whether the funds were properly utilised.

"From now onwards, we will see proper disclosure."

The tax official said the contribution of payroll tax is about 3 percent of the total income tax although it should increase as the economy is growing.

Md Shahadat Hossain, a former president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh, said income from investment in savings certificates, where people invest as a source of future earnings, is already taxed.

"From that perspective, the imposition of tax on provident and other employee welfare funds seems okay."

However, Towfiqul Islam Khan, senior research fellow at the Centre for Policy Dialogue, said social protection for private sector employees was low.

"Provident and other workers' welfare-related funds provide little social protection. The imposition of tax will increase inequality. But there can't be any discrimination in taxation between private and government provident funds."

Khan, citing the latest income tax law that replaced the Income Tax Ordinance 1984, said the NBR tried to find new avenues to increase tax collection and improve the nation's revenue-gross domestic product ratio, which is one of the lowest in the world.

"We can see the desperation of the tax authority to boost collection. This ultimately reveals the inability of the NBR to catch the tax evaders and illicit money makers."