Nigeria’s telecoms sector staked major claim as the next most viable source of forex for the country after report shows that it raked in an estimated $2 billion in foreign direct investment, FDI in the last five years when the country’s excess crude account, ECA, continues to dwindle.
The ECA is the excess of money in dollars made off the official budgetary benchmark placed in a special reserve.
Recent slump in the reserve to as low as $300 million has raised worries as to the solvency of the country of late.
But going by a recent report from the Nigerian Communications Commission, the country may not need to look far for another source of foriegn exchange after telecommunications in the country attracted as much as $2 billion into the country in the last five years.
Prof. Umar Danbatta, Executive Vice Chairman of the Commission, disclosed this when he led the management team of NCC on a visit to the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. William Alo.
According to him, NCC remitted N463 billion to the Federal Government’s Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) in the last five years.
Danbatta informed the Permanent Secretary on the state of the business in NCC, saying that the commission continues to be a significant contributor to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
According to him, the industry’s contribution to the GDP increased from 8.5% in the fourth quarter of 2015 to 12.61 percent in the fourth quarter of 2021. Over the same period, the telecoms sector also attracted over $2 billion in Foreign Direct Investment.
He mentioned that the Commission’s recent, successful 3.5 gigahertz (GHz) spectrum auction for 5G services, the licensing of seven providers of fiber optic infrastructure, and the addition of 38,296 kilometers of fiber optic as some of the main accomplishments made under his direction.
The deployment of fiber optic cables increased from 47,000 kilometers to 54,725 kilometers, he continued.
According to Danbatta, there are now more than 30,0​​00 3G and 4G Base Transceiver Stations (BTS) around the nation.