The Edo Government on Monday unveiled a 10-year strategic plan for enhanced revenue generation up to 2020.
Executive Chairman of the Edo Internal Revenue Service (EIRS), Oseni Elamah, who disclosed this in Benin at the inauguration of the renovated RIRS corporate headquarters and unveiling of new logo, said that the strategic plan addressed the key challenges towards the attainment of world class EIRS for the state.
According to him, the strategic plan focuses on four key areas of human capital development, infrastructure and operation logistics, corporate governance reforms as well as automation of the revenue collection and accounting processes.
He said that the highest average monthly internally generated revenue in the state before the current administration was N280 million.
Elamah also said that the new reforms programme aimed at eliminating inefficiency in the revenue collection process and plugging all avenues of leakages.
The EIRS chairman said that the revenue reforms had climaxed in the generation of more than N2 billion per month as at December 2011.
He said that the implementation of the amendment to the Personal Income Tax Act, 2011, which granted huge tax reliefs to majority of tax payers, resulted in the drop of revenue by about 48 per cent under the PAYE scheme.
Elamah said that the drop accounted for about 60 per cent of revenue accruable to the state government and a significant drop in monthly IGR to about N1.5 billion on the average.
Gov Adams Oshiomhole, who was Special Guest of Honour at the occasion, said that the challenges of government were not just tax collection, but also to develop institutions.
Oshiomhole said that tax policies of government determined good governance, adding that tax issues were clear in the state.
He said that the state had built the institution and was now developing in-house capacity to control collection of taxes.
Oshiomhole said that the state would not share public funds as the resources from tax payers must be expended judiciously.
He said that tax generation must be widened and apportioned according to income earned to sustain the pace of development in the state.
The governor expressed happiness that the residents were seeing the dividend of its tax generation and policies as the state was delivering on roads, rural electrification and water.
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