Akwa Ibom grows revenue by 170% to N43.18bn in six years

Akwa Ibom State says its Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) has grown by 170% within six years, from N15.96 billion in 2017 to N43.18 billion in 2023, attributing the “impressive growth” to governance reforms.

It stated also that improvement in operational processes and corporate governance contributed significantly to the growth.

Okon Okon, chairman of the Akwa Ibom State Internal Revenue Service (IRS) stated this while addressing journalist in Uyo, the State capital on Sunday.

“Our IGR trend shows significant and steady growth, with about 170 percent increase over the past six years, rising from N15.96 billion in 2017 to N43.18 billion in 2023,” he said

According to him, the State’s “IGR rose from N34.75 billion in 2022 to N43.18 billion in 2023 under the administration of Governor Umo Eno, as shown in the figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and Joint Tax Board (JTB), the apex body for tax authorities and final authority for reporting tax revenues in Nigeria.

“It is on record that Akwa Ibom State ranked among top 10 in IGR performance in Nigeria in 2023, coming 4th among the nine States of the Niger Delta in the recently released ranking published by the NBS.

Projecting a very impressive IGR outlook for 2024 , he said it was likely to surpass the set target for the year maintaining that it has deepened its engagements with stakeholders through different strategic initiatives.

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“This includes tailored capacity building workshops on contemporary taxation for the State’s judiciary officers, intensive tax sensitisation and enlightenment campaign on radio, promotion of tax clubs in our tertiary institutions, and technical collaborations with other tax authorities.

Okon said the digitalisation programme would speed up next year by further expanding the automation of our processes and deepening our data-driven initiatives adding that it would significantly improve its operational efficiency and increase the State’s IGR without increasing any tax rate.

He added, “We are confident that without increasing any tax rate, the IGR of our State would be improved via the application of technology, increased tax awareness campaign, and the expansion of the tax net to capture tax evaders.

“Therefore, our focus for the next fiscal year would be to transform our processes from a semi-manual system to full automation. We intend to achieve an end-to-end automation of all our tax processes.

“AKIRS plans to roll-out electronic assessment, e-tax clearance process, e-filing of tax returns, automation of registration, collection and reporting processes with the ultimate aim of enhancing efficiency in revenue collection, taxpayers’ experience and minimization of human interference.

“Also, we will upscale our ongoing tax sensitisation and enlightenment campaign to raise awareness on tax payment as a civic responsibility and deepen voluntary compliance.

“We assure our taxpayers that in our efforts to consistently improve on the State’s IGR, we will be cautious not to embark on any initiatives that will stifle business growth or overburden our individual taxpayers but will align with the impressive and favourable disposition of our dear Governor towards promoting SMEs, entrepreneurship and enabling businesses environment.”