Going by current aggressive revenue drive prompted by robust Medium-term Revenue Strategy (MTRS) that spans three fiscal years, the Ogun State government has said that the internally generated revenue target for 2021 may be surpassed by 60 percent.
The state has recorded a significant turnaround in internally generated revenue, generating about N40 billion in the first quarter of the year, up from N14.6 billion in first quarter of 2020. This represents 33.6 percent of the total N119 billion target for 2021.
Ogun, like other states of the federation, was affected by the negative impact of COVID-19 and #ENDSARS protest last year, recording a deep fall in its revenue from N70.9 billion recorded in 2019 to N50.7 in 2020.
Speaking on economic strategies deployed to achieve effective fiscal and financial re-engineering backed by state MediumTerm Revenue Strategy (MTRS), Dapo Okubadejo, the commissioner for finance and chief economic adviser, declared that the state having learnt from the negative effects of COVID-19 last year swung into action to increase its revenue this year.
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Okubadejo, who spoke at a virtual event held in Abeokuta on Thursday to unveil the theme of Ogun #ISEYA 2021 investment summit tagged, “Ogun Becoming Africa’s Model Industrial and Logistics Hub”, scheduled between July 13 and 14, 2021 in Abeokuta, noted that the state’s current gross domestic growth is still in single digit, but state government targets 25 percent growth.
He said, “Current growth is still in single digit, because of negative impacts of COVID-19. Even though, as you can also imagine, we took a deep in our revenue as well during 2020. We have a significant turnaround in the first quarter of this year, we’ve done almost N40 billion in internally generated revenue.
“Our target this year is to exceed all the previous that were set on IGR, that is why we have put in place all the transformation initiatives, all investment-friendly policies and we also facilitate this 2021 Investment Summit to further showcase Ogun State as preferred investment destination.”
Okubadejo, who speaking in company of Kikelomo Longe, the commissioner for industry, trade and investment, on the choice of the investment summit which is basically on positioning Ogun and Nigeria as a model of industrial and logistics hub for Africa, identified critical infrastructure as means by which Ogun and Nigerian economies can be grown and developed.
“Because of African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AFCFTA), it’s a common market, which means you have to be globally competitive, other countries can be producing and importing to Nigeria.
“All that we need to do in Nigeria is to significantly improve our infrastructure, especially, logistics infrastructure that is what adds to additional cost of production that makes our goods uncompetitive.
“If there is power, if there are economic development clusters and they are organised in such a way that we have all the companies within the clusters, such that the output of one is the input into other, you have cut out the transportation cost, you are enjoying economies of scale, you are enjoying synergy, we can produce power more than for each company to be producing its own power,” he said.
