… attributes feat to reforms in tax system
Lagos State government says it earned some N436.328 billion in 2016, a feat it attributes to some significant reforms carried out in its tax and revenue systems in the last two years.
Akinyemi Ashade, state commissioner for finance, who also supervises the ministry of economic and budget, gave the figure while briefing the media, Monday, saying the amount was N36.946 billion higher than that of 2015, which stood at N399.382 billion.
According to Ashade, the increase in the revenues during the period under review was largely aided by a number of reforms including the introduction of electronic submission of annual returns and the activation of 1 percent statutory incentive for voluntary compliance and self-assessment.
Others include the creation of customer care desks in the 38 tax stations of the agency and the introduction of a dedicated customer care line and the introduction and application of multi-modal payment portals including POS, MPAY, online payment, to complement traditional payment portals at banks, as well as the reforms in tax audit processes to reduce turnaround time and improve efficiency, among others.
“In relative terms, the revenue performance was N36.946 billion more when compared with the year 2015.Total Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) for the year 2016 was N312.820 billion which represents 75% of the projection and 72% of total revenue, compared with N247.946 billion, representing 80% of the projection and 69% of total revenue for year 2015,” he said.
The commissioner also put the Lagos State Internal Revenue Service (LIRS) revenue for 2016 at N247.022 billion, representing 80% of the estimate, 79% of total IGR and 57% of total revenue when compared to N225.041 billion, which represented 81% of the estimate, 79% of IGR and 56% of total revenue for the year 2015.
“In 2016, the existing strategic financial management framework of the State’s resources was steadfastly sustained and this resulted in steady improvement of the State’s revenue,” he said.
On Land Use Charge (LUC), the commissioner said in the last one year, more payment channels were introduced to cater for the large number of people that needed to pay the charge, saying that in some cases, banks were encouraged to establish their presence at Tax and Revenue centres, including LUC centres to reduce incidence of cash transaction and attendant frauds that might arose.
He stated that the innovations and public awareness campaigns adopted by government had drastically increased the state’s LUC revenue generation from N6.156 billion in 2015 to N7.156 billion in 2016, disclosing that in the first quarter of 2017, LUC collections stood N3.99 billion.
On the state’s bond issuance programme, he said the government had continued to utilise the domestic capital markets to raise funds in line with its vision of using sustainable budgetary deficit arrangements to grow the state’s GDP.
“In line with our medium to long term finance strategy, the N500 billion bond programme was established in December 2016 with the N47 billion bond being its first tranche raised from the capital market. We are at an advanced stage in line with 2017 appropriation Law to approach the capital market for Issuance of N100 billion bond in series 11 through book building subject to regular provisions.
“While the state government is pursuing the N500 billion bond programmes, it has continued to ensure a strong and healthy debt sustainability regime leading to improved local and international ratings for the state and its debt instruments. In February, 2017 Fitch Ratings (An International Ratings Agency) affirmed the Long-Term National Rating at “AA+” (ang) with a stable outlook,” he said.
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